


Bring Our Starman Home

by LenleG



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: All aboard the Feels train, Angst, Angst and Fluff, Gen, Hurt!John, Hurt/Comfort, John Whump, Scott Whump, and the pain, fluffy recovery stuff, in there too, little bit of, oh man, the one with the meteors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-14
Updated: 2015-11-14
Packaged: 2018-05-01 14:27:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 26,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5209292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LenleG/pseuds/LenleG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a meteor hits Thunderbird 5 while shields are down, the Tracy family think John is dead for sure. Scott has prepared himself to fly up in TB3 with Alan to retrieve a body, for John couldn't possibly still be alive after that... could he?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. All That Glitters

“...and you’re still monitoring the meteoroids?”

“Gods,” John gasps, from his perch on the ledge of Thunderbird 5’s big bay window, his gloved hands pressed against the glass like a child at a sweetshop, “you should see the _sky_ from up here, Father!”

Jeff Tracy smiles at John from the vidscreen’s holographic projection, studying the figure of his middle son who has his face pushed right up against the window’s thick, reinforced glass and is gazing out into the abyss of space. He’s taken down the shielding and is using the window in lieu of his telescope eyepiece, and that alone tells Jeff just how enraptured the boy is. In fact, he’s not even making notes on the shower, he’s just _watching_. And with his own two eyes instead of his fancy gadgets.

The young astronaut has an old-fashioned book laid open in his lap, his hand resting limply on the open pages to mark his place, but it’s obvious he’s no longer interested in whatever he was reading. There’s a mug of coffee too, resting on the side, its china old and chipped and bearing an out-dated version of the Tracy Enterprises logo, but its contents are probably long cold by now. Jeff laughs as John’s nose bumps against the glass as his boy strains to catch sight of something streaking, glittering past the window. He can see the warm puff of John’s breath creating condensation on the glass as he calls out softly to his Father.

“It’s golden Father, the whole sky is golden. It’s beautiful.” The light from the meteors flashing past is reflected gold in his boy’s pale hair and it creates sparks of constellations across the wide blue of his iris.

“That’s my boy.” Jeff would reach out and ruffle that hair if he could. If John wasn’t a good three hundred and twenty seven miles away from Earth right now. “And you’re sure there’s no danger posed by these things?”

“Nah.” Their Space Monitor chuckles, still enamoured with the view. “They’re going to break up in the atmosphere way before they ever hit Earth.”

“And the UWF station?” Jeff Tracy asks his son, thinking of the hundred or so personnel aboard the United Word Federation’s largest orbiting satellite that hangs in low Earth orbit a hundred or so miles below Thunderbird Five and a good quarter rotation to John’s west.

“They’ll be clear, easily. Nothing to worry about, Father. The asteroid the meteors broke off was primarily iron based, and should be easy for their scanners to detect. They’ve got enough weapons and deflection shields over there to deal with any meteors way before they come close to hitting them.”

“F-A-B John. And Five is far enough out from them...?” Jeff’s brows curve together in concern as he leans forward at his desk, as if to get closer to his boy, even though it’s physically impossible.

“We should be.” John is laughing on the screen, “The shower is coming down pretty far orbitally to our west, and I don’t anticipate any problems up here. That storm in Hawaii has blown itself out too, so it’s looking like a quiet night for International Rescue. Spectacular show though. Is Alan watching this?”

“The meteors? I’ve good reason to suspect he’s up in your old spot on the roof again, thought I’m not sure if he’s more interested in watching the comets or if he’s just trying to give me a heart attack by climbing all over the roof.” They both laugh at that.

“Our Allie’s the best climber out of all of us; so don’t let that heart give out on you yet old man.” John teases lightly, his eyes still fixed on the grand display still streaking past his window. Earth, hundreds of miles below him glitters like thousands of fireflies are just waking up; lights springing on all across the Southern hemisphere as it rotates away from the sun. On screen Jeff takes a moment to stretch and yawn; night is setting itself in on Tracy Island and is taking its occupants with it. John seems unaware though, his gaze fixed on space and his fingers absentmindedly play with the soft paper pages of the old book in his lap, his thumb stroking over the spine.

John knows full well he can get whatever books he likes to keep himself occupied digitally over Five’s systems, but the young astronaut has always insisted that there’s something very special about feeling real old paper under your hands as you read. He often explains, to anyone who will listen, that _real_ books have that distinct, old-paper almondy vanilla smell he loves because of the hundreds of organic compounds in the pages, which release chemicals as they break down over time. His brothers seem to appreciate that knowledge _much less_ than he does. Alan, in particular, had called it gross and has given John’s bookshelf shifty, worried glances ever since. As much as he knows e-books are practical, John, as an author himself, likes to have something solid, tangible to look at and lose himself in as he reads.

It’s the same reason he has literal printed copies of a few of their family photos up on his ‘bird, instead of holographic frames. There’s the one that sits on his workstation, depicting of all six Tracy men plus Grandma grinning out at him from their Island home. It had been taken last summer with all of them standing by the pool and Gordon on the end is poised, his grin mischievous as he’s about to push Scott, Virgil and Alan in all at the same time, fully clothed. Fish never could resist water.

There’s a candid shot of Virgil, his face framed by sunlight and his brush to an easel as he paints. It’s taped to John’s bunk, next to the actual gouache; a warm, friendly landscape that Virgil had painted on the Island with palm trees and the beach and their house to remind him, Gordon had teased, where his home was while he was getting lost in space.

Speaking of the little devil; there’s a photo of Gordon after the Olympics, with his wet hair and gold medal, that hangs on the back of his door. Propped up on his side table, next to his alarm, there’s a picture of Alan and Scott with the elder’s hand resting on the younger’s shoulder. Scott’s face is split with a huge, proud big-brother grin as the kid had just won his first motor race.

There’s also the little silver frame on his bookshelf, tucked between _Mission to Mars_ by Buzz Aldrin and a battered old _Star Trek_ novel with Spock’s face solemn on the peeling cover. It’s the one that has the photo of Mum. Lucille’s eyes are blue and soft and cradled in her arms is baby John, the day he was born. His Father’s arms are around them both and there are warm smiles on both their faces.

“That is true, did he get the chance to tell you about that competition he...” Jeff, who has a very similar smile on his face at that exact moment, as he thinks about his youngest boy, is suddenly interrupted by the urgent blaring of an alarm aboard Five. Jeff’s face contorts in concern as John leaps up from his window spot and dashes over to the console, his long fingers flying over keys, trying to work out what’s going on. He’s dumped his book cover up, on the sill, and Jeff recognises it as of the old NASA textbooks John has had since collage.

“What the...?” John mumbles, his brow scrunched in confusion as he swipes data around on his screen, both hands nimble and rapid over the touch monitors and track pad.

“John? What is it?” Jeff leans in to his screen, checking his volume settings as his son’s voice crackles with static and he tries to gauge a reaction off John’s expression for a clue as to what is happening. The alarm is still blaring and Jeff knows it’s not one of the International Rescue ones that Thunderbird Five usually gets. It’s not somebody calling for help.

“Oh god...” Suddenly, all the blood seems to drain from John’s face and he swears explosively, in a manner so unlike his calm, level headed son that a sudden, cold fist of fear clenches around Jeff’s heart as he works out _exactly_ what that alarm is for.

It’s a proximity warning.

It’s then that the mechanical, automated female voice of Thunderbird Five begins counting, calmly and clinically, down from ten.

“That shouldn’t be possible... Dad! Dad, there’s an off course meteor.” John’s face is verging on grey as he swipes across the display again. “Weapons aren’t going to cut it. It’s passed through the deflection shielding. Dad... It’s going to hit Five, it’s going to...” The automated voice of his ‘bird reaches six in its countdown and John staggers away from the console, shell shocked and on the verge of panic in a way that John, the calmest of them all, simply _never_ is.

“John. John! Listen to me... Listen!” John turns and Jeff chokes on the sheer raw fear in his son’s eyes. Fear that’s _never_ present on John’s face, no matter what the situation. “Suit up and get low, hold on to something and...”

“There’s no time, Dad! It’s going to hit life systems. I can’t get shielding up. It’s going to...”

But the voice has reached three and then two and then John doesn’t even hear her call one over his Father’s voice screaming his name into the microphone and the rushing, ragged exhale of his own breath as John pushes out his final gasp of air, emptying his lungs. With both hands he grabs out desperately, clinging onto the closest thing he can; a metal water pipe set into the wall. He wraps both hands tightly around it and squeezes his eyes shut just before the meteor hits and everything _explodes_.


	2. You're Not Dead Yet

Everything _explodes_.

TB5’s pilot’s feet are ripped out from under him as the whole ship shudders and the artificial gravity suddenly fails. John’s eyes, painful and dry, force themselves open again, and he finds himself floating, staring out at the vacuum of meteor-studded space through a great, horrible hole ripped right through his ‘bird’s side. Detritus of his daily life, anything that isn’t strapped down, is being sucked out into space, bumping against broken meteor shards and ripped, mangled pieces of Five’s hull. Jeff’s voice has been cut off; communications are sizzling and crackling on the control panel. Systems are failing all around him. Alarms blaring.

John, in shock, is unable to anything but stare, horrified, at the gaping hole where half his life had once rested. He’d been sitting on that little windowsill looking out at the stars only moments ago. His small bookshelf, full of his _real_ paperback books – textbooks and fiction and journals - the ones he’d been salvaging and saving since his Uni days, picking up every time he returned to Earth, was just _gone_. Half a page, illustrated with a careful etching of the moon and a spacecraft flutters, ripped and trapped between twisted metal and John nearly cries out as he realises his favourite Jules Verne has been destroyed.

Mum’s picture is gone too.

Beside where his bookshelf should be, his favourite comfy chair has been swallowed by the breach and, oh gods, his telescope, his beautiful little, perfect telescope, is just simply _gone_. Reduced to twisted metal and floating glass fragments. The gorgeous, golden brass and black lacquer and the assortment of lenses and filaments that’s he’s treasured and cared for and carefully polished since he was fifteen and gazing up at the stars from Earth, has been obliterated. Memories of his Father’s hand on his shoulder as Jeff grins down at a much younger him, a him who was bubbling with sheer joy over his birthday present, send his head spinning with the loss.

His empty lungs feel like they’re burning, and Five’s Communication’s Monitor knows, has had drilled into him, how low pressure air trapped in the lungs will expand and tear the tender tissues of the organs apart as it drops. He prays to no-one in particular that he’d exhaled fully enough before the meteor hit. The lights above him spark a final time and fail almost completely, bathing everything in the muted orange of the emergency backup lights and the glow of the still-raining meteors over to his west. They’ve have taken on a bloody reddish hue as they streak across the sky. LucilleX10-37, the star discovered and named by John himself, twinkles familiarly at him through the breach from its place in the cosmos. It feels like a there’s fist tightening around his heart, squeezing.

And he can feel the cabin begin to depressurise around him; oxygen is rushing out of the breach like liquid being sucked through a straw. John’s suit protects him from the most part from the swelling of his skin as the water in it begins to vaporise, but he’s hyperaware that without a space helmet and an oxygen tank, he’s only got about two minutes before the depressurisation kills him anyway.

He’s not wearing space manoeuvre gear, with its powered rocket jets, and so John is forced, undignified, to use the pipes along his Lady’s walls to heave his body around towards the door on the other side of the room. In the zero gravity, he usually feels completely, perfectly weightless, but his hands are struggling to grip and his face is beginning to feel swollen and painful, his skin tight. It makes his body feel much heavier than it should be. John takes a moment to try and even out the shaking of his fingers and to force onto himself his usual calmness, as he notices the surface of his tongue is tingling, almost burning. It feels like the water in his mouth has sort of begun to boil. John reaches the door and he stretches out his hand to the little panel next to it, pressing his palm to the plate and letting it scan precisely over the size of his gloved fingers. There’s the ugly grind and clunk of bolts, but the door doesn’t swoosh open the way it should. Frowning, John hammers in the emergency override code, his fingers skidding over the input panel, but there are warning lights suddenly flashing and realisation hits John that when the meteor hit and knocked out most of his electronics, it also knocked out the airlock doors. He’s not going to be able to get to the pressurised area of Five beyond.

He’s trapped.

Swinging his body around, John looks towards the breach, where he knows, somewhere there, the spacesuits, helmets and tanks had been kept, fixed to the walls and if there’s a chance a mask and oxygen has survived, he’s got to take it.

Trying to make his way over, John has to duck his head more than once as Five’s debris flies haphazardly around what was his monitor room. The loose items of his daily existence batter against his aching body; he takes one of his cameras to the knee and a box of freeze-dried space food to his lower back before he’s forced to twist, quickly and painfully, to avoid having his skull split open by one of his larger potted plants as it barrels past him. A fragment of something, perhaps floating glass from his telescope, slices his cheek. He can feel blood on his face, bubbling oddly in the lack of gravity.

John’s ears are roaring, his head pounding, Thunderbird Five sounds like she’s screaming into the silence of space, all screeching metal and the electric fizz of sparks preying on the last of the oxygen, and John is the only one who can hear her. John who is the only one who always hears _everyone_ screaming. The trapped people calling, the onsite rescuers, his _family_. And all he can ever do is _listen_. Just sitting tight and staying calm while he directs those people to safety from his seat up in Thunderbird Five. Thunderbird Five who is screaming and rolling under him.

Then John, heaving himself hand over hand, becomes aware of the pressure mounting in his ears, and suddenly his eardrums feels like they’re exploding, popping with the shift in pressure and then, equally suddenly, he can’t hear anything at all. Not the scream of Five, or the fizz of wires. He can’t even hear the regular, fast thump of his own heartbeat echoing in his ears, and the startling absence of that is more disturbing than anything else. His ears don’t even change at all as he tries to force his throat to swallow hard without taking a breath of nothing. He brings a hand up, sure his ears must be bleeding, but his fingers come away clean. 

Black spots are dancing is his vision by the time he reaches the other side of the control room and his lungs are screaming for oxygen. The vague knowledge he has probably less than thirty seconds before he’s going to blackout is not a comforting one. The glass-fronted storage case for the helmets and O2 tanks, for out-of-ship and emergency use is completely shattered; ripped apart. The impact of the meteor has destroyed most of its contents, and John finds himself desperately grasping for one of the only two helmet’s he can see as his vision begins to shift, sliding towards whitish grey. He can just make out a thick, jagged cobweb of cracks in the helmet’s glass front and he almost screams in frustration as he tosses it aside. His fingers are slow and clumsy as they reach for the other, fumbling over smooth metal and plastiform and perspex as he tries to see if this helmet is damaged too.

He can’t really tell anymore and so, with no other choice, he jams it, one handed, onto his head anyway. Tactilely checking the locks around his neck are secure and that it’ll hold oxygen, the young Tracy feels around the back of his neck for the O2 tank hook-up. As his vision greys out completely; he trails it down, focusing on both staying conscious and keeping a tight grip on the metal pipe that’s anchoring him with the other hand. He can feel the veins in his neck pulsing, straining. He can feel his heart thumping so hard, it hurts his chest. He casts a fiercely shaking hand around for a tank. When his fingers finally close over one, he finds its line tangled in what feels like some kind of broken metal, he does his best to untwist it and hook himself up as his vision sinks into a inky blackness that feels like space but _isn’t_. The bizarreness of the sudden darkness leaves him unsure if his eyes are open or closed; even though he’s sure he’s hardly so much as blinked. The blindness is even more terrifying than the loss of sound.

His fingers slip and the clasps for the tank slide out from under his hands. He finds, as his limbs drift and his heart stutters in his chest and his skin feels like it’s literally boiling, swelling, no strength at all with which to force his hand back, to knock the tank into place. His nerves are all tingling, fizzing like a head rush and his lips have gone numb.

In a last ditch effort, as John’s consciousness fades he, in a almost-out-of-body, disconnected way, feels his feet meet something big and flat and metal in the air that feels perhaps like a chunk of hull floating around or a piece of TB5’s massive circuitry, and he kicks off it, trying to keep a grip on the wall pipe he can hardly feel, as the momentum throws him backwards and the oxygen tank behind him hits the wall and is slammed into place.

The sudden rush of pressurised O2 into his lungs hits him like a speeding bullet train to the chest and he finds himself choking, coughing, doubled over and gasping for air as it streams through the little plastic tube and into his helmet. He can taste the sharp iron tang of blood in his mouth and he’s hyperaware of the fierce grip his hand is curled into; which, he hopes means he’s still holding on to the piping and hasn’t been sucked into space.

His head is spinning, the oxygen making him dizzier than even the lack of it had done. He can feel his heart straining in his chest, thumping wildly. His lungs cry out painfully at their re-introduction to air and his ribcage feels like it’s on fire. He tries to open his eyes, which have squeezed themselves shut, but they protest angrily at the movement and John becomes aware he’s hyperventilating; choking on his own air as he tries to force it into his lungs faster than his chest can cope with. His whole body is tense; every muscle trembling with exertion as, slowly and carefully, John begins to let that tension go and his breathing struggles to even itself out.

_In out. In out. That’s it John. You’re not dead yet. You’re not dead yet. Come on John._

He tries a second time to peel apart his eyelids and it feels disturbingly similar to the sensation of ripping the tab off a cereal carton as his eyes open, dry and painful, but clear. He swallows thickly, once, then twice, forcing his breathing into a regular rhythm and trying to re-pressurise his ears by swallowing repeatedly. At first he’s terrified he’s been deafened by the shift in pressure but then suddenly, there’s a sharp popping feeling once more and the sound of his own breathing, loud and harsh and awfully raspy fills his ears along with a accompanying crackle of empty radio static that buzzes from somewhere in his helmet. Everything seems to be shifting before his eyes and John lurches dizzily, trying to keep a grip on his ‘bird and himself.

He has to get back to the control panel; to firstly see if he can shift Thunderbird Five’s shielding back to where it should have been. Doing so should stabilise the pressure and stop everything from begin sucked into space. Including himself. John looks over at where the console is bathed in emergency orange and realises his body, weak and trembling, is never going to make it around the walls, holding onto piping the way he got here. He’s just too tired. Eyeing the gaping mouth of the hull breach he wonders if with one, big push off the wall behind him, towards the console, he could clear the damaged section and reach the other side without being sucked into space.

It’s a wild shot, a poor plan, but he knows that he’s not going to be able make it round, so bracing himself against the side wall, John kicks off as hard as he can. He finds himself flying, shooting through empty space faster than he’d imagined he would and the world spins and lunches violently around him. His hands sluggishly fail to brace for the impact in time and John _slams_ into the console with a pained, strangled yell that scrapes his pressure-damaged throat raw. He feels his ribs give under the impact, tight lines of fire snapping all at one in his chest and he chokes on the pain. It feels like he’s splintering apart. Wildly, John’s fingers scrabble for purchase on something, _anything_ , as his momentum fails him and the pull of space catches his body, twisting it violently towards the opening and empty space. Scraping over smooth glass and metal John’s fingers finally snag and his body is horribly yanked, slamming to a sudden stop as his arm is wrenched painfully backwards and he feels the sharp slide of bone as his shoulder is yanked clean out of its socket. The awful, pained sound that comes out spilling of his mouth through his teeth is unrecognisable as anything he’d ever produced in his life. Lines of fire wrap like an iron band around his chest and it’s a struggle for air as he tries to use his good hand to pull himself back upright. The nerves through his shoulder and down along his arm _sear_ , the feeling pooling at his joints and spasming through his fingers.

Choking and gasping, John heaves his body around, eyes bleary and fingers aching and his dislocated shoulder _burning_ as he dials in access codes one handed and tries to focus on the screaming computer before him. The console is intact, for the most part. The half-functioning screen shows readouts of damage and lights flash up warnings all over the place. John’s whole right arm is stiff and useless, as if rigor mortis has already set in, and he instinctively curls it in, hissing through the pain as he tries to ignore the way he can hear his breath rattling in his throat. Numbly, he hammers in the numbers that correspond to the shielding program and feels a rush of relief as soundlessly in the vacuum, a large black panel slides down, covering the breach as the shields fix themselves on the outside of his station. The pressure stabilises itself on the screen and there’s no more horrible, dragging suction towards the abyss of space. The red warning lights for the oxy-rig haven’t changed though; life-systems have been badly damaged.

He’s still floating as well, so John, his good arm trying to clamp around his _oh-god-broken-definitely-broken_ ribs and the other rendered useless, fumbles about in an attempt to strap himself into his pilot’s chair at the console. Finally getting the clips into place; the seatbelt forms a tight cross over his agonising chest and John finds himself coughing all over again, hacking on air until black spots build in his vision and the whole world spins, sliding out of focus like the white snow of an avalanche has fallen, deadly smothering, across his vision.

What feels like moments later, but can’t possibly be, John is wondering if he passed out because he feels like he’s sliding back into consciousness and there’s an orange warning light blinking on the inside of his helmet. His oxygen tank’s levels are getting low. John frowns hazily at that, his lips feeling numb and his head swung limply down against his chest. Just how long had he been out of it? And if he’d been unconscious nearly long enough for an oxygen tank to empty, then why wasn’t Thunderbird Three here yet? Blearily, John flicks his dry, sore eyes across to the time readout on his helmet screen and is shocked to see his unconsciousness appears to have only lasted a few minutes, perhaps five at most. Which means his oxygen tank is getting low faster than he can breathe it.

Which, he realises with a bizarre horrified calmness, means it must be _leaking_.

John’s head is still pounding his brain against his skull and his mouth and taste buds feel all off and odd and rough. His shoulder feels like _hell_ and his ribs are screaming and, wondering if he’d been better off unconscious, it’s only then John realises, rather belatedly, exactly what woke him.

A strong, male voice, crackling with white noise is shouting, low and urgent in his ear. Shouting his name. Painfully, weakly, John tries to summon up the strength to raise his head, and finds himself staring fuzzily into sharp, terrified blue eyes.

“John!” his Father’s holographic face fills the vidscreen, his voice crackling with white noise as the picture keeps sliding out of focus, broken with the interruption of wavy, crackling lines across the screen. Five’s communications rig must be damaged too. “John, are you ok? John, what happened, I need you to...”

“Dad.” The word rolls faintly off John’s tongue, rasping and painful in his throat as his head lolls back, his neck screaming with the effort it took to keep it there. The word felt like needles rising in his throat, like there’s broken glass lodged in his pharynx. He takes a thick, dry swallow as Jeff stares at him, his Father’s grey eyebrows scrunched and his eyes dark with worry. “Dad.” John tries to force out again. “My oxygen” he has to pause to gasp on air again, his throat burning, “levels are getting low.” Each word is precise and soft. He’s dazed, his breath rasping feebly and quickly in his ears and he feels like a small, terrified animal, his heart racing in his chest. He’s cold too, so cold and he’s not sure if that’s because he’s been floating in the space vacuum or because he’s going into shock.

“John. _John._ Look at me.” His Father’s steady voice brings John’s focus back to him. “You’re going to be ok.” Jeff Tracy promises, his face familiar and comforting. “Scott and Alan are on their way in Thunderbird Three. Their ETA is forty seven minutes, you’re going to be...” he’s cut off by John shaking his head sadly.

“No... Dad. There’s not... not enough air. I’m locked out from the rest of Five.” He rasps, aware of how his limbs are trembling. “I think my ribs are broken, maybe my shoulder too... the... spare O2 tanks are too far away, I can’t reach them again, and I think... they were all damaged when it hit. I think... my tank is leaking...” the black spots are dancing in John’s vision again, from the effort or the pain he’s not sure. The oxygen warning on his visor is now flashing red. 9% and leaking fast. “I’ve only got a couple of minutes worth left. F...Five at a push.”

“No...” the word slips, loose and horrified from between Jeff’s Tracy’s lips, _“No_...” The man changes in seconds from firm commander, to terrified Father. Jeff is white and shaking with wide desperate eyes and scrunched, dark brows as he realises _Three is never going to reach his son in time._

“Three’s oxygen main supply is damaged beyond what I can fix here.” John is gasping; his face paler than Jeff has ever seen it and _no, no, no, this can’t be happening, not his boy, not his John..._ “The artificial gravity is shot and I’m having trouble with communications too.” There’s a beat a pause where all Jeff can do is stare at his son’s face as static crackles over it, then a soft, weak, “I’m sorry Father” tumbles from John’s lips and that’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Jeff’s eyes are watering, his hand reaching out to cup the pale curve of his son’s holographic face.

“No, No, No, Johnny. It’s ok. You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. You’re going to be ok Johnny, please...” Jeff’s voice shakes and even as he says it he knows it’s not true. He hasn’t felt despair like this since Lucy died, not even after Gordon’s hydrofoil accident.

“I’m not going... to make it, Dad.” John seems startlingly calm, almost resigned, as he smiles weakly at his Father. “Just... do something for me ok?” Jeff nods his agreement, unable to trust his voice, but willing to do anything at this point for his boy. His poor, precious boy. “Bring my body back to Earth, Dad. I don’t... I don’t want to drift as space junk. I...” John takes a breath, “Bring... bring my body back home.”

“Hey, hey, hey, don’t talk like that Johnny, kiddo, _please_.” White noise crackles along the system and John thinks, for a long moment that he’s losing the signal, but then another voice interrupts on the line, and John finds his face breaking into a small, tired smile.

“Thunderbird Three to Tracy Island. This is Scott.” And of course it was, because there he was, his brother’s face in the background of his Father’s call.

“Scotty?” The young astronaut rasps and feels a stab of guilt and pain as his older brother’s face lights up as he spots him. John’s good hand reaches up to skitter tremulously over dials to try and bring Scott up in a hologram of his own.

“John! Oh god I almost thought you were...” and there’s Scott’s face, hovering, worried above him; big and familiar and comforting.

“No... Scotty,” and John doesn’t know how to break it to him, doesn’t know how to explain how his lungs seem to be _burning_ inside of him, “I’m... there’s not enough O2...” his voice is as scratchy as an old man’s, and Scott winces in sympathy.

“Well yeah but you can just slap on another tank right? You’ll be fine.” And his brother’s smile is so bright, so _warm_ ; it’s more painful than all the feeling in his whole body to kill that smile.

“My... ribs are broke. And something in my shoulder’s gone. I can’t... I can’t reach the tanks.” John can feel his body shutting down around him. The whistle of escaping air high and hissing hurts his ears. His head is pounding and his vision is having trouble focusing again.

“Thirty eight, Johnny, just thirty eight minutes. Give us that. We’ll be there in thirty if we have to, just hold on.” Scott’s face is still warm and determined and how is John going to get him to understand that _this time, this time the golden boy is not going to be able to save them all._ His Father is quiet and pale in the background, his holographic face tight with regret and sorrow. John has to push away the absent thought that wonders if that’s the face his family will _all_ be wearing at his funeral. He can’t even imagine it on little Alan’s and that breaks his heart all over again. He’d been too young when Mum had died, too little to understand that death meant _the person you love isn’t ever coming back_.

“I... I don’t think I can.” His vision is starting to grey out dangerously again, and John struggles to focus his eyes, desperate to keep sight of his Father and brother for as long as he can before... “Scott? Don’t let Alan see... my body. Or Gordy, if you can help it. I don’t want them seeing...” and Scott, brave unflappable Scott chokes at that, his face screwing up with what looks close to agony as he _realises._

“Sure. Sure Johnny,” and it’s almost a sob, “anything you want kid... anything you...”

“Tell them I love them. I love you all...” John chokes, the glass feeling in his throat seems to have forced its way down into his lungs and he can’t seem to breathe right around it. He’s already asphyxiating and he knows it. He can taste blood in his mouth. He’s unsure if his vision is on the fritz or if it’s the weak communications link. Scott’s anguished face is swimming before him.

“Look after them Scotty. Tell... Tell Allie to be good for Dad and don’t let Fish’s... Gordy’s... pranks get out of hand. Keep an eye on Virgil, don’t... don’t let him brood over the... piano and tell... tell Dad not to worry ‘till he’s greyer than he already... is, and get... _Oh_...” John’s voice breaks as the world flicks out around him. It’s not a gradual decline; it’s sudden, like a light going out. His head lolls limply back, like a puppet with its strings cut.

John never sees the struggling communications system cut out completely, falling into crackling static. He doesn’t hear his Father and brother’s voices mingling with screams of his name as they are cut off. He never catches his last glimpse of Scott’s frightened, tormented face as it disappears from the screen.

John Glenn Tracy is just simply... _gone_.


	3. The Hitchikers Guide

The rest of Three’s flight up, from the moment John’s ashen, grey face had disappeared in a crackle of white noise and a glowing burst of interference, had been almost silent. Scott glances across at Alan next to him and finds his littlest brother pale and white-knuckled with his eyes never wavering from straight ahead; fixed on the looming carcass of Thunderbird Five that fills their view screen. The youngest Tracy is completely focused on flying. Focused, as they pass them in orbit, on evading the last of the rain of meteors that have claimed their brother’s life and the huge, looming field of debris from Five; chunks of glass and twisted metal and meteor drifting away from her shell.

They’d had no success hailing John since he’d been cut off.

Both Three and the Island had tried, over and over, listening to half an hour’s worth of empty, crackling static. Empty noise. The sound of a dead TV set. Jeff had eventually stopped, unable to bear the lack of response any longer, and had closed his line to Thunderbird Three in order to call Gordon and Virgil. To tell them what had happened and how, in the line of duty, their brother had been...

The occupants of Thunderbird Three had not heard back from their Father after that.

They’re approaching Thunderbird Five now, cutting the main thrusters, and Scott’s hands tighten on the steering column as Alan, his voice small and shaking, completes the docking procedure aloud. The airlock looms and Scott has to close his eyes as they bump gently into place. John had seemed so calm, so resigned at the end of the call, but Scott had seen his eyes and his eyes had been full of _fear_ – big and blue and _scared_.

“We’re docked.” Alan chokes out and Scott finds his body rising on autopilot, out of his seat, one hand resting briefly on his youngest brother’s trembling shoulder.

“Stay here, Sprout. John...” He has to take a breath to compose himself. “John didn’t want you to see his body. I’ll... I’ll go and get it... _him_.” His voice shakes, “I’ll go and get _him_.”

Scott has turned away, and doesn’t catch Alan’s face contort into a torn, horrible expression. The boy slams his face into his hands; trying, with little success, to stifle the wild, anguished howl that escapes his lips. As Scott suits up to leave the airlock, he can hear muffled, tormented sobbing from the cockpit as Alan tries his best to smother his hiccoughs with his hands and, had Scott gone back up to look, he would have seen the his littlest brother’s body curling into itself; Alan’s knees coming up and his shoulders hunching in, his whole frame rocking and shaking as he chokes on his tears, still attempting to cover his tortured cries by pressing both hands tightly over his mouth.

But the eldest brother only turns and steps through the airlock and into silence.

Five’s interior is bathed in the ugly orange glow of the emergency lighting. Scott swallows tightly, letting the stale, compressed oxygen of his tank pass, cool and dry through his lips. The rasping of his own breath fills the small world inside his helmet. Scott’s feet lift from the deck in the zero gravity, the system having been compromised in even the intact parts of the space station. The door that leads through into the main compartment is off to one side of the airlock chamber, and Scott has to pull out the small laser cutter he’d brought with him to break his way through the locking mechanism and force his way in.

The door gives silently, the cutter slicing, as it was designed to do, through the metal lock like it’s made of butter. Engaging his specialist IR space suit’s external thrusters, Scott boosts himself forward, slipping through the door. Then his knee smacks against something solid, and he looks down, startled.

It’s a book. John’s battered old copy of the _Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy_. The one Scott had bought him when John had been seven with a painful wobbly front tooth, big, watery blue eyes and a desperate need for distraction. It’s well thumbed pages float, spread out like the white wings of an angel, never to be turned by their owner again and Scott has to try and to push down the painful sob that’s rising in his own throat. He presses forward, unable to look back.

Looking around, Scott is quick to realise that John’s body is not strapped into his command chair, where he’d last seen him over the radio linkup. He finds his little brother across the station, floating limply in the 0G, close to where the hull was breached and re-sealed by Five’s shields. John’s wrist is tangled in a matt of wiring, anchoring his body there and for one, long moment; Scott thinks that he’s going to turn John’s body over to see the young man grinning up at him, making Scott the victim of some kind of horrible, twisted practical joke.

But even as his hands catch on sleek spacesuit fabric, and the cold body of Thunderbird Five’s young pilot rolls weightlessly with the momentum, his head lolling lifelessly, Scott knows that’s not going to happen.

“Oh gods Johnny...” His hands come up to cradle either side of his brother’s mask, gloved fingers pressed against cold plastic to gently hold his brother’s head steady.

Scott stares through the clear perspex and glass at the pallid, grey face of his little brother. His eyes are dark rimmed and closed, his eyelashes light and long; casting shadows on his porcelain cheeks. A jagged cut that slices its way across John’s cheekbone is still sluggishly leaking blood. His lips are slightly parted, ever so slightly, and his skin is paler, far paler, than Scott’s ever seen it be; almost grey and translucent, bathed in the weak emergency orange of his satellite. Scott takes a shuddering breath, realising that somewhere in his mind he’d still been expecting to get there in time, to find Johnny smiling and waiting for pickup at his console, his thin, nimble fingers skating over his controls and his head off lost in space, even though Scott had known full well there was never a chance for them to ever get there in time.

“We we’re too late... Far too late... I’m sorry Johnny.” He finds himself apologising to the empty expression, “Oh, gods, I’m so, so sorry.” And that’s when the first sob chokes its way out of his throat. A half formed, piteous sound as his arms come up, looping around Johnny’s back to pull his brother’s chest to him, his fingers cupping the back of John’s neck around the oxygen port that had failed to save his life. There’s no steady rise and fall of John’s chest as Scott holds them together, tucking Johnny to him like a child with an over-sized doll. And Johnny looks like a doll. Lifeless and porcelain.

Another sob and Scott’s hands tighten around his brother, clutching at his limp, cold body as they float in the broken gravity. Clear perspex bumps clear perspex and he holds their heads together, desperate to get as close to what was once his brother as he can. A hardened ex-USAF pilot and the eldest live-field operative of International Rescue he may be, but to Scott, family is _everything_ and his _little brother_ is cold and _dead in his arms_. His crying pulls up from somewhere deep in his chest, sharp and painful and Scott cries like he’s never done, not since he was a little boy and his mother had died; deep, painful sobs wringing with the guilt and pain that he just _wasn’t there in time._ _He should have been there in time._ The mangled scar of the hull breach in his peripheral is like a mangled scar across Scott’s own heart.

“Bring him in, Scott.” Alan’s voice crackles in over Scott’s anguish, breaking through it and Scott feels like he’s a twig, snapped under someone’s giant boot. His littlest brother’s voice sounds tired and far, far older, than he actually is, thick with pain and sorrow. “Bring our Starman home.”

Gently, Scott untangles Johnny from the wiring he’s all caught up in, his hands shaking in a way they’ve never done on a rescue. But this isn’t a rescue. It was too _late_ for a rescue because they were _too late to save their own brother._ With that thought, Scott abruptly finds he can’t stand being aboard Five for a moment longer, the signs and detritus of his John’s life floating aimlessly around him, rendered pointless and useless and unloved with the death of their owner. His little brother’s workstation is flashing, displaying data and figures for a man who’s never going to see them, readouts about a galaxy that had forever been John’s very own. The stars go on glowing - space illuminated through the port window as it has always been. The pinpricks of light don’t twinkle as they do on Earth, but gods they _shine_. John would have known why they do that. His stupid half human, half computer brain would have known. Kid knew everything like that.

 _This,_ Scott thinks absently, _this is how John would have wanted to go. Up on his ‘bird - in space - amongst the stars. This is what he loved more than anything._

Scott kicks off the ground, his arms looped carefully around his precious cargo, who floats limply along with him as they’re projected towards the airlock. The book, _The Hitchhikers Guide_ , is still floating forlornly by the ‘lock, and Thunderbird One’s pilot finds himself reaching down to scoop it up, pressing it against John’s still chest and wrapping an arm around them both.

He’s not sure why he does it, perhaps he’s thinking somewhere in him that Allie might like to read the book; that it might help his youngest brother remember and stay close to the person John had been. But as much as he doesn’t want Allie to forget their brother, the most likely reason is that Scott just wants keep a piece of their little Spaceman close. It’s probably dumb and sentimental, but Scott can’t bring himself to care.

The airlock closes behind them, and the return of gravity weighs far heavier on Scott’s shoulders than it has ever done. He expects John’s dead body to become heavy and unmanageable with the shift in G’s, but he finds he can lift the thin, lanky young man with surprising ease, cradling his brother against his chest, his head tucked gently onto his shoulder. Scott steps into Thunderbird Three and the airlock seals behind him.

“I’ve got him, Alan. Take us home.” He breathes into the microphone as it crackles with static. Alan’s only reply is to fire up the nuclear engines, the whole ship springing to life and reverberating under his feet.

Johnny, in his arms, seems to weighs far less than he has any right to. He’d always been a slight young man, but Scott is left feeling unsure if the astronaut’s lack of weight is due to the sheer adrenaline that’s pumping through his own veins and leaving him feeling like Superman or if Johnny’s diet of freeze-dried space packaged food had left their brother malnourished. That or perhaps it’s the depressurisation’s fault. But then again, maybe he just doesn’t want to think about Johnny having gone hungry up here all alone.

Gently, oh so gently, Scott tries to set his brother’s body down on the deck floor but he finds his knees giving from under him with the weight of the feeling that he just _can’t_ carry him anymore, and John takes a tumble onto the ground. He doesn’t want to be relieved that John didn’t feel that, but on some level he is. Grief has made Scott’s hands shake and his shoulders tight.

_First Mum, now Johnny._

John’s body lolls there, unmoving where he was all but dropped, and Scott, his face contorted with agony reaches down and unclips the useless helmet from around the astronaut’s neck, carefully lifting the mask over John’s head, lightly tugging it off around his ears. As he does so his gloved fingers brush the thin, fine fibres of John’s soft hair and Scott finds his digits winding themselves through it. His brother’s face is surprisingly peaceful, tranquil, like he’s just fallen asleep. Only he can’t have because Johnny’s slightly parted lips have taken on a bluish hue and his eyes are circled by dark bruising, the lids a purplish grey that spells out oxygen deprivation. _Not a nice way to go; feeling your own lungs fail you._ Scott hopes absently that it hadn’t hurt too much, but he knows he’s only trying to give himself false comfort. He’d done pressurisation training as much as the rest of them had; it was horrible.

Thunderbird One’s pilot takes a moment to tug his own helmet roughly off over his head, followed by the hasty removal of his tank. Then he quickly strips his gloves from his fingers and then Scott can actually _feel_ John’s cold, clammy skin under his fingers, as he ghosts through the astronaut’s hair. He can feel the soft strands giving under his palms as he cradles John’s head and the rough ticklish prickle of his haircut, where the pale fibres are short behind the shells of his ears. His face looks like it’s been drained of colour, with his light hair and his grey skin tone; Five’s pilot looks almost monochrome in death.

“Oh John.” It’s the softest of sighs that escapes Scott’s lips as he cradles his brother’s head closely. He presses his own warm cheek to John’s cold ashen one and blood smears between them from the astronauts gash. Scott’s whole body curls around his lifeless brother’s; all hunched over and tucked in small. He can feel Alan firing thrusters beneath him, and the ship rocks as Alan’s hands shake on the controls. But the huge spacecraft feels almost like a mother’s arms around them and Scott doesn’t have the heart to rebuke Alan for it over the open line that’s still crackling through the ship. Scott’s hands slide round to cup the nape of Johnny’s limp neck, marvelling at how delicate and fine the hairs there feel to his numb, clumsy fingers. He tucks his digits under John’s jawline and curves them round to press softly into the dimple at the back of his cold neck. His thumbs ghost over John’s cheeks, clutching his brother slack face tightly, and it’s then, the ship rocking as they fire away from Five’s empty hull that he feels it and _freezes_.

“No... There’s no _way_...”

There’s the thump of a slow, sluggish _pulse_ under his fingers, where they’re pressed to John’s neck.

Scott is hit by disbelief. Sheer startling, breath-stealing, black out disbelief. His eyes go wide and he stumbles backwards, his hands flying up to his mouth. Because it’s just _not possible_. John has been without oxygen for almost half an hour. Brain death should occur in fifteen minutes. He should be dead he should be...

But he’s _not_.

It’s then the panic grips him.

“He’s alive!” Scott all but screams, clutching at that weak, struggling pulse point and Thunderbird Three lists suddenly and dangerously in space as Alan’s hands jerk completely off the controls.


	4. Rescues Are What They're Good At

“He’s alive!” Scott all but screams, clutching at that weak, struggling pulse point and Thunderbird Three lists suddenly and dangerously in space as Alan’s hands jerk completely off the controls. Scott is thrown, slammed heavily against the side of the ship as she rolls and it’s all he can do to clutch John’s body, Johns _living_ body, to him in a hurried attempt to shield his brother from the impact. Scott’s head cracks painfully back against the bulkhead, smashing into solid titanium so hard that his vision whites out. Pain ripples down his neck and through spinal cord and makes him cry out; his voice high and rough under the impact. Slowly, he slumps down the wall, John heavy and limp against him in a tangle of limbs as Scott’s head spins and his vision blurs.

“S...Scott? Repeat that? Scott, Scott... I thought you said... I heard...” comes Alan’s tremulous voice over the intercom, buzzing overly loud in his ears. Scott groans, shifting John’s weight in an attempt to try and find his way onto his knees again. Dazed, he reaches up to wipe blood from his eyes, from where it’s running down from a sharp split in the side of his forehead where his head had smashed against Three’s solid hull.

“He’s _alive_ , Alan!” Scott gasps out; blood smeared and disorientated with the world still spinning around him like Alan has decided to throw them into another barrel roll. “John’s _alive_! He’s got a pulse!” Not breathing though, Scott notes dizzily, gently lying his brother down and setting his limbs cautiously straight. He holds the back of his hand a few inches above John’s mouth and nose, hoping for any sign of breath. When there is none, he presses two fingers under the astronaut’s chin to tilt his head back and check his airways, which seem clear, if a little red and swollen.

“Scotty...” Alan’s voice is shaking like he thinks his big brother has gone mad with grief, “he was without oxygen for thirty minutes he can’t be...” his hands are shaking again too by the way Three is shuddering around them.

Scott pulls at the openings to John’s space suit at his throat and, tugging the thick space-proofed fabric apart, he lays his head against John’s thin, cold chest, his cheek meeting the soft, worn fabric of one of his Father’s thin old NASA t-shirts. He can hear it; the weak, struggling heartbeat. It’s there. It’s actually there. He’s not hallucinating in his sorrow. He didn’t hit his head _that_ hard.

“Affirmative. He’s alive, I don’t know how he is, but he is.” Checking John’s airways again, and seeing how the bluish hue of his lips is rapidly deepening, Scott realises John has probably, impossibly, only not been breathing for maybe three, four minutes at most. Scott knows brain damage occurs at five to ten. Certain death at fifteen. _No hope at all after half an hour._

“Alan, we need to get him back to Earth _now_. He needs medical attention.” Thunderbird Three steadies beneath them as Alan’s hands stabilise themselves under the pressure of needing to save his brother’s life. It’s no longer a recovery, it’s become a _rescue_ , and rescues are what they’re good at.

John’s airway is clear, but his chest isn’t rising and falling at all and so, adrenaline thrumming in his chest, Scott swings one leg over his brother. He leans his shoulders forwards, cautious at first to not to put any of his weight on his brother’s fragile ribcage. Carefully, if a little uncertainly, Scott places the heel of his hand in the centre of John’s chest, above his sternum, overlapping it with his other hand and interlacing his fingers. With no time for hesitation and a silent apology to his brother, Scott pushes down hard, wincing as he feels John’s ribs shifting, grinding under his palms. Definitely broken. Better having broken ribs than being _dead_ though.

Bracing his shoulders Scott tries to find himself a rhythm, pressing down sharply and repeatedly against John’s cold chest in an effort to keep the blood and oxygen circulating in the astronaut’s body. To keep his heart beating.

“Come on John, come on, _breathe_.” The eldest Tracy boy demands, pushing down as hard as he dares. After thirty, precisely counted compressions, Scott leans forward, tilting John’s head back with two fingers under his chin before he reaches out to pinch his brother’s nose tightly shut.

He knows he has to breathe manually for John; to give his brother a chance by filling his lungs with oxygen for him. The automated equipment they have on board is only designed to provide the oxygen, not make a person use it.

Which doesn’t mean it’s not weird as hell to lock his mouth over John’s cold, slack one in a tight seal, and blow air forcefully into his lungs. But as John’s chest rises and falls, his lungs expanding with air once, then twice, as he does, Scott counts that as a victory. _Let the kid be alive to yell at me for it later._ He thinks. _Please let him be alive to yell at me later._

“Come on kiddo, come on.” Scott begs quietly, as, leaning back again, he delivers another thirty compressions with the heel of his palm and his weight behind his hands. Fear has formed a painful, hard knot in Scott’s chest, stunting his own breathing. Making his hands shake. He delivers two more rescue breaths, blowing steadily and firmly into John’s airways; his chest rises and falls again but John doesn’t seem to be responding at all. There’s blood in Scott’s eyes again, and he swipes it away irritably with the back of his hand to push out another thirty compressions and then another two breaths, hating how he knows the time in racking up. _Seven minutes, potential for brain damage, death imminent._ His brother’s broken body is disturbingly different to the plastic dummies they’d practiced CPR on in his Air Force training, it’s soft and cold and the feel of real skin under his fingertips as he delivers the breaths is harrowing. There’s blood smeared on John’s space t-shirt, crimson against off-white, and if Scott didn’t know it was from his own hands he’d think John had taken a dagger to the chest.

The ship vibrates around him and Alan’s voice echoes somewhere around the metal walls. The youngest Tracy is talking via the radio link-up, but not to Scott, so he surmises that Alan has called their Father to apprise him of the situation. And to hopefully get medical assistance ready for their landing. Scott can’t hear Alan properly to be sure; the sound of the ships engines, the blood rushing in his ears and his own haggard breathing are far too loud. His skull is pounding, the impact it took has made him dizzy.

“Please John, please, breathe, please.” But as he checks it, his hands sliding over freezing skin, John’s pulse is stuttering out under his fingers and his lips are turning purplish grey. _Nine minutes_. “No no, no, no...” the litany tumbles from Scott’s lips as he gives another thirty compressions, two breaths, then another thirty, each one pushing harder than the last, struggling and straining and he’s crying out, screaming John’s name, as he tries, desperately to get his brother to just take in some _air_.

“Come on Johnny, breathe. Just god _dam fucking breathe_. Come on!” Scott cries, gasping, lightheaded and breathless himself and he brings his palms down with far more force than he’d ever intended, _slamming_ them into Johnny’s chest.

There’s a loud, painful cracking sound followed by a sharp, choked cry as the ribs give under his hands. John’s eyes fly open and suddenly he’s coughing, gasping for air, his whole body jerking and shaking, and Scott can only grip his brother’s shoulders, and stare as John’s mouth opens and closes and he quivers like a fish out of water; lips parted as he tries desperately to suck in as much air as he can. John’s eyes squeeze tightly closed again and his face is torn, twisted in a horrible grimace of pain, his whole chest shuddering under the force of his coughing. There’s blood on his lips and that’s bad, very bad, as Scott, shell shocked and disbelieving, scrambles off his brother.

“Johnny! Johnny!” Scott’s hands are under John’s head again, supporting it as his brother convulses, the sound of air getting sucked desperately through his throat sounds painful, like he’s coughing up broken glass, but he’s _breathing_. He’s actually _breathing_. Colour flood’s John’s face and the relief in Scott’s chest is staggering and exhausting.

First response training kicking in, Scott gently lifts one of John’s limp, trembling arms and tucks it up by his head at a ninety degree angle. He then takes the other, the right one, and crosses it over his brother’s chest to tuck the cold, thin fingers against his cheek. As he does so, something _grinds_ in John’s shoulder and Five’s communications monitor gives a long, painful groan, which slides out from between his clenched teeth, choked and hoarse like the sound of creaking hinges or raw meat going through a mincer. His face twists up in pain but his eyes don’t open again.

Scott finds himself swearing quietly, his fingers quick and careful as he pushes John’s space suit aside so he can palm the shoulder though the thin fabric of his t-shirt, pulling the short sleeve back as much as he can to reveal the blotchy purpled skin beneath. His fingers feel gently around the puffy, extensive bruising, focusing on the top of John’s humorous and around his scapula, where his skin is tight and swollen. His shoulder looks oddly squared rather than round and Scott finds a bulge of bone under the skin at the front that’s definitely out of place. Palming it gently, he can feel the shape of the top of John’s humorous has been forced out of its socket and dislocated.

Wincing in sympathy, Scott scrabbles to pull down the top half of his spacesuit and tugs his own t-shirt, the standard issue soft blue rollneck, off over his head. He doesn’t think he can reset the bone himself, for fear he could trap the thin, fine nerves in John’s shoulder, so he’ll have to make do with the next best thing. Scott finds himself wishing Virgil was here; his brother was so much better at this than he’s ever been. Shivering slightly, Scott folds the fabric once, then twice, before tucking the little make-shift pillow of cloth into the gap between John’s damaged arm and the side of his chest. Then, taking the long sleeved arms of the t-shirt, he softly wraps them once around John’s upper arm, trying not to move the limb too much, then he brings them up, lifting John’s head gently, to tie a secure knot above his opposite shoulder; forming a make-shift sling. Taking hold of his brother’s limp forearm he gently rotates it into a ninety degree angle and rests it down across John’s chest. His trembling fingers linger, surprisingly tenderly, over John’s cold, bluish ones.

Shifting back on his heels, Scott can see John is taking little shallow hiccoughs of breath, small, sharp intakes of air, and his brother’s face is still very pale as he trembles. Careful of the shoulder, Scott lifts John’s right knee, bringing the limb up so that it rests in a bent position and he uses John’s slight weight to roll him cautiously onto his side and into the recovery position. Checking his brother’s pulse, Scott finds it weak, rapid and thready; racing under John’s cool, clammy skin like it’s trying to make a circuit round one of Alan’s tracks. Scott realises that John’s body is probably not pumping around enough oxygenated blood, and that he has likely gone into circulatory shock.

Casting his eyes around, Scott spots the copy of the _Hitchhikers Guide_ that he’d brought aboard with him and, snatching the book up, he uses it to prop the spaceman’s feet up, raising and supporting them to try and increase the blood flow towards his heart and head. Pressing a hand to John’s pallid, mottled cheek he finds it clammy and cold, and then, taking a moment to reassure himself that John’s still breathing, Scott pushes himself to his feet.

He’s not expecting the rush of dizziness that sweeps over him, or the sharp, throbbing pain in his head. It feels like someone has tried to split it with an axe. Scott staggers slightly, his hand coming up to his forehead and smearing the blood there as he tries to catch a deep breath and steady himself.

“Scott?” Alan’s voice comes over the airwaves, sounding concerned. “Our ETA is twenny, Dad says Virgil is doing his nut setting up the medical stuff down there ready for our landing... how’s... how’s John?”

“I’ve got him breathing.” Scott reports in and the huge, tearful gasp of relief Alan makes brings a tired smile to his face. “He’s in shock and he’s pulled his shoulder out of socket and definitely broken several of his ribs, but he’s breathing.”

“Thank god...” Alan chokes out. “Did you hear that Gordon? He’s breathing!” and that’s when Scott becomes aware of another voice, distant to his ears, but patched through clearly for Alan, rambling away in the cockpit and he realises that Alan must have a open line with the Island, keeping in contact with base. It’s a comforting thought.

He tunes the pair of them out for the moment though, opting instead to stumble towards the ladder that leads down to Three’s storage compartments below their feet. As Scott does so, he finds his hand reaching out to the cool metal wall for support. Slowly, he heaves himself down until his legs hang over what feels like an abyss below. He has to squeeze his eyes closed to try and stave off the dizziness, taking deeper, longer breaths in an attempt to stop the world from spinning _quite so much_ around him. Maybe he’d hit his head harder than he thought. Or maybe it’s just the exhaustion. Either way, Scott is careful as he takes the short ladder down one rung at a time, checking and re-checking his grip on the metal because to fall now would probably result in him not getting up again anytime soon. Which would spell _bad_ things for John.

His thick space-boots meet the cold diamond-patterned titanium alloy of Three’s flooring and Scott is quick, if a little careless, as he rummages through the containment boxes they keep down here. He pulls out a medi-pac, one of the standard issue ones kept aboard every Thunderbird and he checks the use-by date stamped across its front before unzipping it to peer at the contents. Satisfied, and filled with the desire to hurry back to John, Scott also grabs a blanket, one of the spares for Three’s bunks, and pushes himself back towards the ladder.

Getting back up to the hold is harder work than Scott had ever imagined it could be. The muscles in his shoulders and calves _burn_ as he pushes his exhausted body upwards and each rung feels like a small mountain he has to conquer. But then Scott has always been good at conquering mountains. As he pulls himself out of the hatch and staggers upright, his mouth curves up in an almost triumphant smile. He takes a couple of wobbly steps, but then, in his victory, his ankles decide to try and go in the direction he really _wasn’t_ and Scott nearly falls down again. He has to reach out and bracing himself on against the wall and Scott pushes himself to take a few more wobbly steps in the right direction. Cursing himself for his fatigue, Scott eventually reaches John’s side once more and leans back over to check his brother’s airways and pulse.

Scott’s lips curve down a frown. John is shivering; his eyebrows scrunched in the kind of pain that plagues even the unconscious and his whole body is being wracked by a relentless trembling that jerks his limbs and forces tension into the muscles at his neck until they strain. John’s breath is coming is harsh, short, shuddering gasps, uneven and weak and his lips are still holding onto that god-awful blue tinge. Scott, shaking off his own dizziness the best he can, leans back on his heels and unzips the medi-pac, rifling through it and pulling out small silver square of folded Mylar; a type of polyester film coated with a thin veneer of aluminium that, when wrapped around the body allows the material to reflect heat back towards the skin. Athletes use them after races. Gordon has some for after cold ocean swims. And now, Scott decides, John was going to use one for his shock and probable possible hypothermia. Carefully unfolding the Mylar blanket he tucks it gently around his shivering little brother, trapping any heat John had left to lose within its little silver bubble.

Scott presses the back of his hand to John’s cheek again, finding it still cold and clammy. He wonders how much of that is shock and how much might be hypothermia. Space was cold, after all. Especially as Five’s warmth would have been leeched out with its oxygen. John’s suit must have protect him from it to some extent, but Scott can thank it later, as he’s busy bundling the other blanket he’d brought up from the hold over their Space Monitor. He takes care to tuck it in softly under John’s chin the way their mother had done when they were little before he’s rummaging in the Medi-Pac again and bringing up a thermometer.

Not really wanting to disrupt John’s airways, Scott decides to tuck the thing under his armpit, careful of the broken limb and to not lift the blankets too much. The reading comes back, flashing on the twin, universal dial as 30°C/86°F; too low for regular body heat and well within the hypothermic range. Scott tucks the blankets even closer around his brother, scowling and wishing he could do more. In fact he is feeling pretty powerless right around now; out of his depth. Virgil is the medic in the family, not him, and standard First Response training can only get him so far. Turning back to the Medi-Pac, Scott fingers a roll of bandage, and wonders if he should have attempted bind his brother’s broken ribs or if moving him to do so would have only aggravated the problem.

He’s pretty sure he should at least try to get John on some oxygen though; to try and increase his intake in the hopes that it’ll bring the probably incredibly low O2 level of his blood back up. Rummaging in the Mec-Pac again, Scott brings out the emergency oxygen mask, and, linking it up to a small, portable tank of pure O2 he presses the thing over John’s nose and mouth. He holds it there securely as he tries to slip the elasticised band of the mask over his brother’s head; carefully sliding one big, warm hand under John’s head and wondering, once more, at how his fingers catch in the soft hairs at his nape. Mask on, Scott checks his pulse and breathing again, ignoring how much of the desire to do so was necessity and how much was paranoia and his own selfish desire just to watch Johnny _breathe_.

Frowning, Scott thinks he should probably try to get him on a saline IV, to counter any dehydration from the depressurisation. There’s a huge trocar needle and bag for it in the Medi-Pac but Scott’s not entirely sure how device is supposed to work, aside from _needle in vein, bag in the air_ , so he figures he’ll leave that until they’re safely back on good old Earth and under Virgil’s steadier hands. _It shouldn’t be too long now, right?_ John probably needs drugs too, the good stuff, but Scott’s not even sure which cocktail would be best, and he doesn’t really want to give his brother anything without Virgil’s say so as he vaguely remembers something about morphine causing breathing problems in patients and the last thing John needs is any more of those.

“Scott?” Alan’s voice chooses that moment to crackle through his radio’s static, cutting into his deliberation. With Five’s communications shot to hell up there they seem to be having a bit of trouble with even the close-circuit radios and Scott frowns at the white noise that reverberates over the line and spoils his baby brother’s voice. “We’re angling down through the atmosphere, burn’s gonna start any minute now. You and Johnny good?”

“I’ve got him.” Scott tells his brother, “We’ll be ready; you focus on flying, ok Sprout?” His arms are already coming up to roll John back onto his back, gently looping an arm under John’s good one and tucking the other firmly across his brothers chest.

“FAB Scotty.” Alan’s voice crackles out, leaving them alone again, and Scott, realising he has neither the strength or time right now to get them both into Three’s proper seating, pushes his back hard up against Three’s wall. He pulls John’s sagging body upright like a ragdoll, tugging him into a semi-seated position between Scott’s outstretched legs and he rests the blanket-bundled body back against his own chest. John’s head falls back limply onto Scott’s shoulder, exposing the pale expanse of his throat and the way condensation blooms in short, sharp puffs against the clear plastic of the oxygen mask with each of the young man’s shaky breaths.

Working quickly, Scott decides he doesn’t want John’s ribs to be shaken around too much after all, as he knows this burn is going to be rough on them, and he grabs the roll of bandage from where he’d abandoned it in the Medi-Pac. Taking advantage of their now vertical position Scott loops the roll, unravelling it as he goes, tightly around John’s chest, over the top of the blankets he’s still tucked into. He binds John’s arms in place as he does, as an extra precaution, and the end result looks slightly ridiculously like someone’s been trying to give Johnny away as badly-wrapped Christmas present. Scott merits that it should keep his ribs firmly where they should be inside his chest, at least until they get back home, even if it does look daft.

Thunderbird Three’s walls have started shaking around them, the vibrations jolting up Scott’s spine as he braces himself, legs straining to push his body against Three’s hull and John held tightly and firmly within the circle of his arms. The position doesn’t cushion the shocks nearly as well as the chairs in TB3’s cockpit do, but Scott resigns himself to the thought that at least he’s acting as shock-absorber for John, who should only feel the burn minimally as they break through Earth’s atmosphere.

The ship’s juddering getting worse and worse all around him and it’s like Alan’s ‘bird is trying her best to violently shake them apart. Scott grits his teeth, his neck straining as he feels Three’s every bloody jolt and jerk as she throws them out of the stratosphere and breaches the ozone, flames licking around her nosecone as they plummet. It feels like they’re trying to punch through a brick wall. Scott’s whole body is shaking, his bones feeling like they’re splitting, bile rising in his throat and, _gods Alan must be gunning it_ , _this is the worst atmospheric entry burn he’s had in years,_ his head pounds painfully, blood throbbing in his ears. There’s blood in his eyes again and he can’t even reach up to swipe it away as his eyes squeeze themselves closed and his fingers curl, latched in a death-grip around John’s limp body like it’s a lifeline. Scott’s breathing is hard and painful in his chest and he’s terrified because each of his five senses is quickly becoming compromised and he _doesn’t know_ how Johnny is anymore. He can’t tell. He can’t see, can’t open his eyes. The roaring in his ears has masked the pitiful rasp of John’s breathing. He can’t feel anything over the ship’s vibrations and he can only pray that... he can only...

They break out of the ozone with a hard punch that throws them deep into the troposphere. Gravity is dragging them down and Scott feels the heady surge of relief as he feels, somewhat mutedly, the fierce rumble of Alan firing the retro thrusters under them. The shaking abates around them, the burn spent, but their shooting towards Earth, spiralling down and Scott would think Alan has lost all control over Thunderbird Three except he can feel how precisely his little brother’s ‘bird is descending.

The landing is a brutal one. It feels like Alan has slammed them down onto the Earth’s surface like he’s trying to squash a bug and it’s all Scott can do to push his head back and take deep, ragged breaths as they hit. He’s still all curled up tightly around Johnny, with his numb fingers clutching desperately at his brother’s body, and he stays like that, panting and trembling, until a small, round face, frightened and pale, is suddenly all up in his blurred vision, shouting his name and shaking his shoulder.


	5. Hlarjabwaharr

“Why are _you_ covered in blood?” Alan demands, his voice torn between terrified and exasperated. And wasn’t _that_ a charming way to greet your poor shaken-to-death oldest brother. “Come on, let me see him.” Alan is pleading and it’s only then that Scott realises he’s been clutching at John’s body in a death grip, his knuckles tense and white, bunched in the blankets and bandages and refusing to let go as Alan tries to pry John away and Scott just tries to remember how to _breathe_.

Uncoiling his limbs, which, Scott is absently surprised to note, are shaking uncontrollably, he forces his fingers to uncurl and Alan pulls John away, gently laying their brother flat and leaning over to check his breathing and pulse.

There’s silence except for Scott’s horrible raspy breathing while Alan winces and fusses over John.

“You ok?” Alan asks after a moment, looking up at his oldest brother. He’s obviously found John’s vitals steady enough for now, and Scott can’t quite seem to find the words around his rubbery tongue to create a coherent reply. “Oh Christ, you’re _not_.” And if possible Alan has goes even paler as he notices the greyish green of his eldest brother’s face and the way his eyes are blank and sluggish as they move. Plus he’s covered in blood. The blood is a big clue. “Hang on Scotty,” and then his baby brother is leaning over _him_ , fingers at his pulse point and Scott somehow doesn’t manage to command him to _get off and see to John_ as it slides out from between his lips sounding a lot like ‘hlarjabwaharr’. Alan gives him an incredulous look for that one, softening off as his eldest brother’s eyes don’t quite manage to focus on his face.

“John!” There’s a surge of relief in both brothers chests as Virgil’s voice reverberates around Three’s hull and _how did Scott not hear the pounding footsteps before_ , becausesuddenly he’s there; Gordon and their Father hot on his heels. Virgil freezes as he spots Scott, slumped ungracefully against Three’s hull, ashen and bleeding profusely from a head wound and he snarls “Scott, what the hell have _you_ managed to do to yourself?” as he stops to stare at his big brother.

“J...ohn...” is the only reply that tumbles out of Scott as a long, harsh groan. Virgil seems to shake himself, sharply re-assessing his priorities as he crouches down at John’s side with steady hands and a renewed sense of urgency. Virgil leans over their unconscious brother, fingers already rapid over John’s cold skin, taking his vitals manually before hooking him up to one of their small, portable medical sensors. Virgil pales at the readouts. Their Father silently goes to his knees beside him, crouching close with his hands hovering, fluttering over his middle son’s still body as if he’s uncertain what to do.

Taking a few seconds for himself, Scott uses Alan to push himself further towards upright, blinking lots to try and clear the cobwebs in his pounding head. But it’s right then that Alan decides to roughly press a gauze pad to his forehead, taping it firmly over the wound and to Scott it feel like being smacked across the head with a sledgehammer. Hissing fiercely in pain as his face screws up, he _snarls_ semi-incoherently at Alan, throwing in what sounds like a rainbow of the USAF’s finest expletives (that he is _so lucky_ his Father doesn’t seem to hear) as his head _burns_ and his vision whites out. Alan, the little shit, looks mildly amused as he comes back into focus.

Scott pushes the kid aside a little rougher than he would have usually done (and has to quash the wave of guilt as Alan, not expecting the blow, topples). He scoots forward on his knees, wobbling and getting close enough to Virgil that his brother will be able to hear him. Virgil looks up at his approach and the sheer _fear_ for John in his face is staggering as Scott quietly lists off;

“Depressurisation, I’m not sure how bad... not sure how long it was before he got a helmet on. Hypothermia for sure. His ribs are broken and his shouldy... should _er_ is dislocated. Dehydration. I’ve not given him anything for any of it yet... strapped up his arm and stuff best I could though.” Vigil swears softly, already carefully loading up a syringe of _something_ and checking it for air bubbles with a sharp tap before he slides it into John’s skin, forcing out the contents into his brother’s bloodstream. “There was blood in his mouth. He wasn’t breathing for... for maybe ten minutes or so.” Scott rambles on, his face grey and his eyes squeezed shut as the world wobbles around him. “Maybe longer I don’t know how... I thought he was...”

“And you?” Virgil cuts across him, eyes sharp as he takes in the bloodied gauze pad Alan taped to their brother’s forehead and the wide crimson trails all over his face. His hand comes up to gently steady Scott’s forearm, squeezing reassuringly.

“Might be concussed.” Scott finally concedes; his admission soft. “We got thrown across Three on takeoff.” Alan inhales sharply, guiltily somewhere behind him and Virgil’s surgical glove-covered fingers are on his face, gently lifting the pad and peering at the wound. “I’ll be fine until after you’ve seen to John.” Virgil, after an assessing moment and noting how big and blown-out Scott’s pupil’s look, nods sharply before leaning back. Scott supposes the fact he’s still conscious is the winning factor, as much as he’s starting to wish he wasn’t.

“Alan,” the boy scrambles as Virgil calls his name, “think you can get Scott down to med-bay?” Alan nods determinedly, ever helpful, and Scott finds his little brother under his arm, trying to heave him upright. “Father.” Jeff, who had been frozen, lost in his own world, jerks at the soft call and he looks up at Virgil with red-rimmed eyes. “I need you and Gordon to get a stretcher so we can carry...”

Silently their Dad shoulders Virgil aside and slides one firm forearm under his little boy’s head curving it around his shoulders and cradling John close. His head lolls limply onto his Father’s shoulder, the oxygen mask over his nose and mouth pushing hard against Jeff’s throat as he presses his lips, quick and dry, to the top of his son’s head; just under where the soft, pale strands are stained with thick, scarlet blood that is more likely Scott’s than his. He follows it up by slipping his other arm under John’s knees and then he lifts his son, blankets, monitor, oxygen and all, into the air. He cradles John to his chest like the boy weighs nothing at all, his feet planted solidly in the ground and his arms curled tightly around his son. Jeff’s salt-and-pepper brows scrunch together in a frown, the question _why the hell is he this light_ is plain their Father’s expression and once more thoughts of his little brother being perhaps malnourished flash across Scott’s exhausted mind.

Gordon, after noticing how John is shivering, is the one to tuck an extra blanket over him; pulling it gently up to his big brother’s chin. John’s skin-tone is an ugly grey and Gordon has to tear himself away to take up the weight on Scott’s other side; seeing how Alan is struggling to keep their eldest brother, who seems to be having balance _issues_ , upright on his own.

“Med-bay?” Their Father finally speaks, his voice hoarse, and Virgil simply nods; his eyes big and sad and that warm, soft brown.

“We’re not taking him to hospital?” Scott croaks from where he’s suspended between his two littlest brothers. Gordon is making a show of how heavy he thinks Scott is by pulling faces at them all.

“A hospital won’t be able to do any more for him than we can here,” Virgil shakes his head and follows their Father through Three’s crew hatch, “and I don’t really want to move him any further than med-bay, especially with his ribs. But we might need to fly in a specialist, Father... It’d all be hard to explain though...”

Scott privately thinks that no-one in the world could possibly be specialist enough for their crazy family, but as the world is spinning around him as he tries to take a single lurching step; he wisely keeps his mouth shut. Nausea is rolling his stomach and he doesn’t trust himself not to throw up right now. Yeah, definitely best keep that mouth shut.

He can feel Alan trembling under his arm and Scott, feeling all too powerless and just a little bit venerable, is aware that poor Gordy is the one shouldering most of his weight. He’s going to get teased to hell about that later, he can just tell. Alan’s fingers curl tightly around his elbow and Scott frowns. _He’s still just a kid._ Scott swallows thickly and brings his hand up to lock loosely around Alan’s wrist; a comforting gesture for them both more than a stabilising one.

...

By the ridiculous amount of time it takes the trio to hobble down to med-bay, John is flat on his back and Virgil has him hooked up to what looks like a bazillion different machines; all bleeping and whirring and keeping their brother firmly on this side of the pearly gates. Their Father is bizarrely, conspicuously missing from the picture, but Brains is there, flitting about the machinery like an anxious hummingbird and speaking with Virgil in low, urgent tones as he shows him something that looks like an X-ray on his holographic tablet. Alan and Gordon dump Scott’s sorry ass into a convenient chair and they skitter away to crowd their other injured brother, demanding answers from Virgil, who has to explain patiently to Alan exactly what the ventilator John is on is doing to help him breathe, as he works around them.

Scott forces his exhausted, shaking body upright, so that he’s sat up in his chair rather than sprawled out as he’d been dumped. He feels shaky; all disconnected and dizzy as his vision blurs in and out and he does his best to clamp down on the sick feeling that’s still turning his stomach. He absently notices himself marvelling at how Virgil’s hands remain so steady as they slip a cannula into John’s wrist, taping the needle there firmly but letting his digits linger over his brother’s cool skin. The line leads up into where Brains is suspending an IV bag on a pole and Scott numbly watches the steady drip of warmed saline (and probably a high dose of the good old Tracy drug supply) trickle into his brother’s veins; trying to combat the dehydration and pain.

They have John unbundled from Scott’s hasty packing-tape approach to keeping him warm and have stripped him of his space suit and t-shirt to bare the swathe of bandages and tape that Virgil has used to bind John’s ribs up properly. Awful patches of blues and purples ride up out of the bindings; John’s skin is mottled and so badly bruised that it makes Scott wince in sympathy. _Something must have hit him real hard to cause that._ John’s shoulder has been put back into socket and immobilised in a proper fabric support-cast and sling and someone has racked the temperature up in here to compensate for the astronaut’s loss of layers. Their brother is still trembling away all the same, plagued by shivering, but his lips, fingertips and eyelids are slowly loosing most of that awful blue tinge. The temperature read out on one of John’s monitor’s shows his body temperature (the pair of digits red and flashing at 32.4°C/90.32°F) as being roughly two whole degrees higher than it was when Scott had taken it earlier aboard Three. In a roundabout way, Scott manages to communicate this fact to a very patient Virgil, slurred speech be dammed. Scott isn’t sure if his brother looks relieved or more worried by the poorly-imparted news.

Looking across, Scott sees that their baby brother Alan, who has been through so much today, has tucked himself up against John’s skinny side, his head pillowed on his arm and his eyes peacefully closed. The youngest of them had piloted Thunderbird Three incredibly well under pressure tonight, that god-awful burn be dammed, and he had gotten them all back home as fast as he could. Scott feels a surge of pride, watching Alan’s sleeping face and he finds his own features morphing into a smile that would probably look more like a grimace to anyone watching. Gordon, now perched on John’s right, has been uncharacteristically quiet; pale and shaken ever since Scott had first seen him. On their wobbly, slow limp to med-bay, his little brother had been abundantly clear about how he’d thought that John simply _wasn’t going to be coming home alive._ Poor Fish had been obviously terrified.

And Scott still has no idea _how_ John had been alive. Not after thirty minutes without oxygen, floating in the abyss of space. Virgil suggests, softly, that perhaps the intense cold had slowed his heart rate and metabolism right down - so much that it had reduced his need for O2. Scott finds that an unlikely answer; perhaps it would have kept him alive for a few minutes, maybe even as long as five, but he finds half an hour under such conditions almost impossible for anyone to survive. He’d really thought Johnny wouldn’t be coming home.

“...How you doing Scooter?” Scott hadn’t even noticed Virgil move, but there he is, a solid comfort squatting down in front of him, eyelevel and warm, his fingers, now clad in _clean_ latex, probing at Scott’s forehead again as he winces. The worry lines Virgil’s his brow suggest that this isn’t the first time he’s asked that question and Scott blinks owlishly at him, trying to shape his mouth into a reply.

“M’ fine.” Scotty mumbles and Virgil barks out a slightly-crazed laugh at that, wiping a tired arm over his face before pulling a clean dressing out of nowhere to set about changing the one Alan had hastily applied to Scott’s head earlier. He does it with a lot more care than their littlest brother had shown. He takes a soft cloth, wetted with warm water, and begins to meticulously, but gently, clean the blood off his older brother’s weary face. There’s the soft press on fingers on his jaw as Virgil tilts his head to the side and the tepid heat of the cloth over his cheekbone and lips is a comforting one as his head pounds.

“Like hell Scotty.” His brother chastises him, not unkindly, for his response and he makes a soft clucking noise under his tongue in disapproval. “You should have seen your face; you looked as green as Two under all that blood.” And Scott has no real reply to that so he stays quiet. “This doesn’t look like you’ll need stitches,” Virgil tells him, examining the gash closely, “Head wounds do tend to bleed an awful lot, and you’re still looking almost as pale as John over there, so I’m thinking a transfusion and 30cc of morphine to try and take the edge off that headache, ok?”

Scott vaguely feels himself nodding and drifts in and out as Virgil hooks him up surprisingly painlessly to a cannula of his own and a half a litre of his own blood, from the stock. By the time Virgil has run himself out trying to check the size of Scott’s pupils and his heart rate and his levels of nausea to gauge how bad his concussion might be, Scott’s head is pillowed on his own shoulder and he is fast asleep.

Sighing, Virgil steps away to bring up one of his piano recordings on the input panel set into the wall, and he lets the floaty, calm rhythm of his fingers on the keys fill the silence he’s surrounded with. He sets an alarm to remind himself to wake Scott every hour to check his definite concussion and throws another blanket over John, before he finds himself slumping down, exhausted and stressed and so goddam hopelessly drained, on the corner of John’s bed. Wearily, he asks Brains to keep an eye on his brothers for him and to wake him if John changes at all. Then his head goes down, pillowing on Johnny’s blanketed thigh, just above his knobbly knee and the sounds of his piano lulls even him off to sleep.


	6. Not Without a Fight

Jeff, having all but screamed at his poor Secretary, two in the morning be dammed, that he is taking time off for a family emergency and for her to cancel _everything_ , walks into the infirmary, a good three and a half hours later, to find Brains quietly going over data in the corner of the room and all four of his sons huddled up to John’s unconscious body like little pale penguin chicks, starved of their mother’s heat. He has to chuckle lowly at the sight. They’re curled around him, careful not to put any stress on any of their brother’s tubes or wires, and they all seem to be deeply asleep, taking comfort from the steady bleep of John’s heart monitor and the constant rasp of his breathing. His littlest brothers, Alan and Gordon are on the bed with him, tucked into his chest on either side, but careful not to put any weight on his ribs. One of Alan’s arms is slung out over John’s stomach and Gordon’s hand is curled up, his fingers hooked into the soft fabric of the edge of the bandages, his nose pressed, small and warm, against John’s upper arm. Virgil is curled up like a cat, all wound around Johnny’s feet and sleeping like the proverbial dead. The soft strains of piano hang in the air and Jeff realises that the medical bay’s speakers are thrumming out a recording of one of his second son’s best concertos.

Ever his brothers guard dog, Scott has pulled his chair as physically close to the bed as possible, right up next to John’s head and is bent over in an attempt to be close to him. He opens one bleary eye and mumbles out a soft “Hi Dad” as Jeff sinks down onto the edge of the bed, scooting Gordon back a bit and letting the mattress dip even further with the weight of five occupants. Scott’s fingers, curiously, are woven into the soft fibres of John’s hair and his attention skitters nervously over his brother’s monitors, checking and re-checking his brother’s vitals. He has a slightly bloody gauze patch taped over his forehead and he seems a little dizzy, blinking owlishly as he tries to focus on his brother’s face. He’s tense too; his whole body wrought with straight lines and strained sharp angles. The morphine has obviously left him a little out of it.

Cautiously, Jeff’s arms reach out to wind themselves around his oldest, encircling Scott tightly and pressing him close, careful of Scott’s own cannula and IV line. As he does so Scott makes a small, half-choked squeaky noise that tugs at something deep within Jeff’s chest and his fingers scrabble at his Father’s comforting arms, as if trying to return the gesture. With a low, heavy sigh, Jeff lets his lips graze the top of his eldest son’s head, where the hair is fine and soft and a slightly sun-bleached lighter shade of the deep brown he has all over. Jeff lets his eyes close, taking a moment to just hold his boy as Scott lets him.

“Hey Scotty.” He whispers eventually into his boy’s crown and slowly Jeff feels all the tension go out of Scott’s rigid frame, as his Father rubs his eldest’s back in slow, broad circles until Scott relaxes against his Father, his body tired and heavy in his arms. At over thirty years old, Scotty is far too big for this; he outgrew his Father’s knee what feels like a lifetime ago, but Scott holds on anyway, for Jeff’s comfort as much as his concussed own. Jeff’s wedding ring rolls on his finger as he rubs Scott’s back, the little gold band as always a heavy presence on his weary soul, twirling on his finger in a way that makes Jeff briefly wonder if Lucille is trying to comfort the both of them too.

He’d thought he lost John tonight.

Resting his chin oh-so-lightly on the top of Scott’s poor, knocked head, he looks over at his other boys once more. Huddled between them all, John looks surprisingly tiny; all swathed in white and drowned by tubes and bleeping machines. For as tall as he is, John appears small and a little _too_ skinny when sized up to the other Tracy’s – even Gordon who stands almost a foot shorter than him and little Alan, eighteen and still the baby of the group, suddenly seem to dwarf their brother. It looks like John’s stay on Five has affected his muscle mass.

As well as that, John has always been the fairest, the lightest skinned, of the lot of them; attributing it to all that time in space and a lack of vitamin D. But he’d never been _this_ pale. The white of the linens seems to bleach all colour from his skin and it leaves him looking washed out and grey, like a dirty cloth through a ringer. His mouth however, parted by the rude intrusion of the tracheal intube that’s feeding him oxygen, still looks a little bluish even now.

“How is he?” Jeff asks, as Brains comes up to hang a new bag of saline and he checks the readouts of the monitor with a slight frown.

“V...Virgil w...would do better with that... quest...question.” Brains stammers, scribbling something with his fingers on his holographic tablet screen. “It... It’s hard to say, M...Mr Tracy.” And then he passes Jeff the tablet, scrolling down though his recordings to the current data and how they’re handling it. Scott struggles slightly in his arms, as if craning to see, but Jeff shushes him down for the moment with a gentle nudge and the press of a cheek to his hair like Scott is a misbehaving puppy. It worked when they were kids and it works now.

 _Depressurisation, hypothermia, dehydration, three broken ribs and multiple fractures, dislocated shoulder, oxygen deprivation, low blood pressure_... Jeff sucks in a harsh breath, his hands fisting in Scott’s dirty spacesuit, and his mind fills with the horror, once more, that they _should have lost him._ That _John should be dead_.

_But he isn’t._

_Not without a fight._ Jeff smiles, glancing up at his unconscious son. _Like a true Tracy. One of his boy’s through and through._ Scott wriggles in his arms and quietly Jeff holds the tablet lower so he can try and read it too. Scott all but growls as his eyes fail him and Jeff kindly reads it out loud to quieten his boy down. Virgil has strapped John’s injuries, fed him oxygen, kept him warm and drugged him up and it seems there’s not much more they can do but monitor his boy, watching his vitals for changes, as he slumbers on.

“If... If you look a...at this X-ray, Mr. T...Tracy, you can see his ribs appear to have not dam...dam... injured any of his internal organs. It’s a lit...little hard to tell, as soft tissues only show up min...minimally, but we’re confident that we don’t need to call in a spesh...specialist.”

“The blood in his mouth was from damage to his lungs, trachea and oropharynx as a result of the depressurisation.” And that’s Virgil, now sitting up, his legs swung over the side of the bed and the guilty expression of a child caught napping where they shouldn’t. He looks a little tired and sleep rumpled with his hair stuck up oddly at the back, but he’s alert and professional and he pulls himself up to check John’s IV. He seems worried though; his face grim and his teeth curl over and chew anxiously at his bottom lip, worrying the skin there. “We’re pretty sure he’s not ruptured anything and we should be clear to take him off the endotracheal intubationand put him on a nasal cannula instead as his breathing improves. His O2 levels are coming up slowly.”

“He’s going to be alright then?” Jeff asks quietly, his hand reaching out to gently take one of John’s limp, slim cold ones and he swipes his big, warm fingers over the back of his son’s hand, careful of the cannula needle taped into the back of his wrist. His fingers curl tighter as it takes a moment for Virgil to respond.

“I’m not sure, Father.” His second eldest admits softly, worry scrunching his brow and Jeff feel’s Scott’s body go rigid in his arms at the admission. “Brains and I ran a CAT scan about half an hour ago; we’re sending it off to some of his old colleagues for a second opinion, but...”

“But?” their Father presses urgently, Scotty is trembling in his grip.

“Gods Dad... I... There’s a very real chance he could be brain damaged. The amount of time he was without oxygen is... unprecedented. No-one has _ever_ survived that long without...”

“The world record for the longest amount of time a person has held their breath is held by a German free-diving expert with a PHD in Medicine.” And that’s Gordon, awake and pale, and ever the family goldfish. Alan, next to him, also awoken by the ruckus, is sitting up and rubbing blearily at his eyes, not quite with it enough to succumb to the wide eyed fear the rest of his family are sinking into. “His time underwater was twenty two minutes.” Gordon rambles on. “Before that the record had been eleven. There’s no way that John could have...”

“He wasn’t breathing when I got to him.” Scott’s hoarse whisper is caught by all of them and they fall silent again. “But it was like he’d only stopped maybe three, four minutes before that but I don’t know how... there wasn’t any air...” Jeff can feel Scott’s breathing, quick and clearly terrified and he can’t seem to think of a single thing to do to calm him. It’s so unlike Scott, he’s off his game completely, but Jeff supposes that seeing your brother’s dead body, floating in space, will do that to you. That or the knock he took to the head. Or the morphine. Gently, Jeff pushes Scott back in his chair and watches his grief-torn face with a tight frown.

“He _should_ be dead.” Virgil growls viciously and suddenly, his hackles up like an oversized angry house cat. They all jump as he slaps his hand hard against the monitor where John’s blood pressure, blood oxygen levels, temperature, pulse rate, perspiration, adrenaline levels, and respiration all glow in various traffic light shades. “I don’t know how he’s not.” It’s as if he’s trying to reassure himself that he’s not wrong and that their little spaceman really is a miracle and that he _is_ still here _alive_ because he has to be. Unable to contain himself, Virgil is then stooping over their patient and pressing his fingers manually to his pulse point.

“Maybe he found another Oxy tank?” Alan suggests softly, with a slight shrug of his shoulders, after a few beats.

“His ribs are _mashed_ , Allie.” Virgil snarls like a mother cat over her kittens, “He so goddam” Jeff lets that one slide with only a sharp frown, “lucky not to have torn his lungs up. How the hell he’d have managed to... but if he _did_ that _would_ severely decrease his risk of brain damage.... It’s...” Virgil deflates slowly, “It’s unlikely though, it’s probably best you don’t get your hopes up, kiddo. He... He might not even ever wake up I don’t... I don’t know... I don’t know enough to... I’m not actually a Doctor, you know.” And now his voice is trembling, “I patch you lot up all the time but there’s only so much I can do... I...” and Virgil crumples, powerless and pale, his head in his hands and his shoulders shaking.

“It... It’s not t...too late to call in a specialist, V...Virgil. If you... think... think you need assist...assist... help. T... There’s a lot we don’t know a...and...” Brains reaches out to place a warm, comforting hand on Virgil’s shoulder and Jeff recognises that it’s not just Scott whose off his game, but all of them.

“We could ask Doctor Caldwell.” Gordon suggests quietly, “The one who helped me after my hydrofoil accident. He set Alan’s elbow too, the time he broke it during that Dubai earthquake, remember? We told him Alan had been rock climbing.”

“He fixed me up when I got that massive scrape across my thigh last year.” Virgil adds, with a grim sigh. “Eleven stitches. Dad told him I’d fallen down the stairs, of all things, when really I’d fallen down a mineshaft.” It’s a good idea and Jeff considers it for a moment, closing his eyes and running his fingers gently through Scott’s hair.

“We would be forced to explain about International Rescue.” Jeff sighs, uneasy to let anyone else in on their secret. “John has injuries can’t be explained away as falling down the stairs or rock climbing.” And John’s not been on the NASA registrar for years. Explaining away injuries caused in space was a lot harder than anything the boys could have done on Earth.

“We could say it was a scuba accident.” Gordon chirps up suddenly, “They have many of the same problems. We could use that to explain the depressurisation and the oxygen problem.” Gordon, who was _never_ any good at staying still, is now pacing rapidly up and down. “I can get some damaged gear together; make it look plausible.”

“That... That could work.” Jeff muses gently. “If you think we need him, Virgil, I’ll send out the call.”

Virgil, tense, with his head hung low, nods slowly. He’s clearly a little too out of his depth and if he’s admitting defeat it must be bad.

“Do you think Scott needs his head looking at as well?” Alan’s watching his eldest brother’s glassy eyes and pale face.

“Scott has needed his head looking at for years.” Virgil chuckles roughly, ducking as Scott tries to reach out and swat him around the head, before sobering, “But no, the swelling is minimal and he didn’t need stitches.” Their brother stoops down to Scott’s level, assessing his weary face. “His eyes are focusing better now too. Plus it’d be even harder to explain away the both of them to Doc Caldwell. What you really need, Scotty boy, is _rest_.”

Standing again Virgil scowls down at Scott, weak and pale in his _filthy_ spacesuit. His hair looks like its strands are on a drunken walk-a-bout, scatted in clumps all over his head and flattened oddly where their Dad had rested his cheek. He’s still got blood smeared in the hollow of his throat, where Virgil had missed it during cleanup and his eyes are shadowed by dark rings.

“Scott?” Virgil is suddenly concerned about his elder brother’s lack of response. Blearily, Scott raises his head to look and him and Virgil frowns at the lapse in reaction time. “Right then. You’re going to be seeing a lot of Gordon for the next few days. Ah! Deal with it.” He adds as Scott looks like he’s trying to form some kind of protest. “Gordy, you’re on neurone checks every hour, make sure this idiot keeps hydrated and that he _rests_. Try and get him to eat if he can, but I reckon he’s probably still feeling nauseous. Oh, and as much as he _really_ needs to shower, I’m reluctant to let him go in on his own with that head injury... No... Sorry Scotty I’m not gonna patch up your pathetic hide again when you slip and fall.” As he talks his fingers have reached in to check the gauze pad pressed to Scott’s forehead and Virgil decides to change it for another clean one, quickly checking over his concussive symptoms before lets him go.

“Father,” Jeff jumps as Virgil turns his wrath on _him_. “I want you to take Alan,” Virgil’s eyes flick across and he notes how the poor kid looks dead on his feet. Possibly in some kind of emotional shock as well. “...to change and shower and then to bed. Tuck him in if you have to.” It’s a testament to how exhausted Alan must be that he hardly even protests as his Father stands, unravelling himself from Scott, to place a wide palm on each of his littlest son’s shoulders as he steers him out of the room. “You get some sleep too Dad. Just a couple of hours and then you can make that call to Caldwell in the morning. I can cope until then.” Virgil commands, as an afterthought, and their Father smiles at him. “All of you had better see to it that you find Kyrano or our Grandmother and get them to make you something to eat.”

“Grandma?” Gordon’s face whites out “Has anyone actually _told_ her?” he whispers and they all freeze because no, none of them have. The little old lady will be pottering around upstairs in blissful ignorance while her boy’s are freaking out down here and John lays there unconscious. “Dibs not me!” Gordon crows and _two_ brothers have to duck Virgil’s fist as Alan echoes it.

“Fine I’ll tell Grandma. Go on; off with the lot of you, stop cluttering up my med-bay!” _Nurse_ Virgil growls and the Tracy boys scatter like bowling pins amidst muffled snickering, tripping out into the hall. Scott, suspended by Gordon is the last to stagger out, and only because Gordy had forgotten him in his scramble to leave and had had to rush back.

With a soft sigh, Virgil slumps down into the hard plastic chair that Scott has abandoned and frowns at John’s unconscious face.

“Yeah I know.” He frowns, “If you we’re awake you’d be laughing at me too. But it’s for their own good, really.”


	7. Earth Gravity. Must Be.

Doctor Greg Caldwell was a tall, thin man, with greying, neatly cropped hair, olive freckled skin and steady hands. His craggy, aged face is warm and welcoming to his patients and his eyes are slate grey and friendly. He nudges his glasses, small and round, up his nose and swipes his fingers over his moustache with a tired sigh and he stares at the figures of his latest patient’s read out on his screen. Julia Bidwell, twenty three and with more rocks in her pretty little head than brains. Or Caldwell would have thought had he not got the CT scan up on the monitor to prove otherwise. She been brought in with a fractured skull obtained by tripping over her own shoe laces and it was the fifth time he’d seen her since the New Year. Winding down after the morning rush, Caldwell begins to recline in his office chair, leaning back with a hot mug of coffee cradled between both hands. It’s then that the call comes through.

“Doctor Caldwell speaking, how can I help... Jeff!” Caldwell finds himself automatically sitting straighter in the chair as the billionaire’s voice rings down the line, greeting him. “How good to hear from you, why I haven’t since young...” _now what was that boy’s peculiar name?_ “Virgil scraped up his leg up when he took that tumble last year. Your lad thought he knew my job better than I do.” Caldwell laughs lightly, “I recall I had to stop him performing the stitches himself. What can I do for you old friend? How are the boys?”

“It’s John.” And that’s enough to have the smile sliding off his face. John was the middle boy, he thinks, the thin one with the pale hair and blue eyes. The one that wasn’t around much because of his work. “He was scuba diving off the reef with Gordon and got into trouble. Hit by something, we think, Gordon’s not sure. He was stuck down there a while though and by the time Scott and Alan pulled him out, he, well Greg, he wasn’t breathing.” The Doctor sobers immediately at that, the only other time he’s heard fear like that in Jeff’s voice was after young Gordon’s hydrofoil accident. The situation was serious. He sets down his coffee. “Scott got him breathing again but it took a while and, well, Virgil thinks it’s bad, more than he can deal with alone. He doesn’t want to admit John to a hospital, but he asked me to call you for help. I’m not... I don’t...” the Father stammers on the other end of the line and his Doctor can almost picture the man wringing his hands together as he was want to.

“Jeff.” Caldwell’s voice is calm and clear. “I’ll fly out at once.” He’s already packing up his desk and closing the case files on his computer screen. His colleagues can take Julia Bidwell’s stupidity for a couple of days. “I’m sure Virgil is doing all he can. Do you think you can describe John’s symptoms to me, so I’m prepared?” his hand skitters over his stethoscope, placing it around his neck so he can get at the digital pad that had been sat underneath it, ready to make notes.

“Depressurisation.” The Tracy patriarch’s voice is soft, “The accident happened while he was pretty far down, deeper than he should have been swimming. We think his equipment was damaged somehow. The water was cold, too, so hypothermia. Virgil says his ribs are broken, from some kind of impact, but they haven’t ruptured anything, he ran X-rays and a CAT scan. John’s shoulder was dislocated and Virgil put it back into place. Plus oxygen deprivation, likely hypoxia, we’re not sure how long he was without.”

“How long has it been since the accident?” Caldwell scribbles his stylus over his pad, his handwriting messy but his notes precise. “What has Virgil done so far for him?”

“About seven hours. We dried John off and bundled him in blankets. Virgil bandaged his ribs after he set and strapped his shoulder. He’s on saline for dehydration and his blood pressures low. I’m not even sure what drugs Virgil has dosed him up on, but I can send the digital records to your tablet so you can review them on your way here.”

“Thanks, Jeff, that would be helpful. I’ll sign out here and give them notice that I’ll be gone awhile.”

“I’ve sent my manservant, Kyrano, in our helicopter to pick you up. He’ll be waiting on the roof. Thanks for this, Greg. Virgil is exhausted, you’re a huge help.”

“My pleasure Jeff.” And Caldwell finds it is - he’s always willing to help that family out in any way he can, and not only for the pay check. Jeff’s boys really are something special.

...

The first thing John becomes aware of is that he’s _cold_. Mind numbingly, bone shakingly cold. It feels like thick, chilling needles of ice are sticking their verglas, bony fingers straight through his paper-thin skin and into his flesh. Glaciating it like beef in a fridge-freezer.

It’s a sharp, biting _burn_ , right through him; his skin prickling with it as if someone is mercilessly pushing a thousand pencil-lead thin arrows into his bloodstream that lodge and snap off, agonisingly, at his joints and in his fingers and through his _chest_. Cold prickling pins and needles of sensation, stabbing pains that make him gasp, long hard and heavy and he’s only mildly aware of the way his neck is thrown back and of the way he’s wheezing on each painfully drawn inhale. The rough, steady pounding in his head is like someone crashing cymbals against the sides of his cranium and his first coherent thought spills, blurbling out of his mouth as a long, agonised groan.

Oh _god._

He tries to force his heavy, aching eyelids open, but it’s like they weigh a thousand kilos and they burn and stream and sting under the strain. His cheeks are wet and he’s choking, crying out against the pain and gasping on it. Heat blazes all around him like a thousand brands against his skin, and it’s like playing with fire. He’s so cold he needs the heat, wants to cling to it like a drowning man would a life raft when waiting for a Thunderbird, but it forces the thin spikes of pins and needles ever deeper into his bones. The smell that assaults his nose is odd and medical and sharply clean and there’s the rough, hot scratch of cloth against his bared, cold skin. John can just about feel the horrible, clinical intrusion of a nasal cannula in his nose and down his painfully sore throat and there’s the ugly touch of needles and wires against his skin.

“John? John! What is it? Where does it hurt? John?” There’s voice he recognises but it’s too loud, too harsh and his ears hurt. His head is still thumping painfully, all tight across his forehead and at his temples; it feels like someone has drilled holes into his skull and his brains are leaking out. He struggles weakly at that. He wants to keep his brains in his head, thank you very much; but moving only makes everything so much _worse_.

His limbs feel heavy and stiff, like someone’s taken them apart, stitch by stitch and filled them with lead weights instead of bone. _Earth Gravity. Must be. S_ omething in John’s brain strings that together, but it feels worse than the usual weight, heavier and more painful, radiating from his chest, out from his shoulder and down around his ribs in an ugly curve. Hell, it feels like someone has parked Thunderbird Two on his sternum. His mouth is dry, his taste buds stinging and rough. He’s thirsty and he tries his best to swallow thickly but it’s hard with a tube in his throat and he ends up coughing again, the noise weak and gasping. His chest is _ablaze_. It feels like there’s an iron band around his ribs constricting; getting tighter and tighter with each breath. Like a snake coiling around struggling prey, relishing in the small animal’s death throes.

“You’re not supposed to be awake yet.” There’s another voice, one he doesn’t recognise, but it’s softer and he can feel, mutedly, big warm hands resting over his chest. Like someone is trying to hold all his ribs inside where they belong. There are other fingers, covered with the delicate skin of latex, pressed either side of his head, at his temples. Someone is trying to keep him still and, as John can feel his heart pounding, huge and solid in his chest, that makes him want to struggle all the more. What if these people are _hostile_ what if...

“Oh god, hang on, let me give you something stronger for the pain, Johnny.” But that sounds like Virgil. Is that Virgil? The fingers on his face feel the right size but he’s not sure why because his head just _hurts_ so much. Everything feels like it’s moving, spinning around him, and even though he can feel his back pressed against something still and solid it’s like he’s floating in space.

“Give him a shot of Midazolam, 7.5-mg is probably wise. That should knock him back out.” Comes the old, unfamiliar voice and John can’t even find enough control over his own body to string together any sort of protest.

It takes a few seconds but then it feels like someone, maybe Virgil maybe not, has loaded his veins with antifreeze and everything blurs into the background, throbbing and painful but John feels strangely disconnected from it all. And then everything slides out. And John is gone once more.


	8. Cookies Are A Cure-All

“Alan dear? Are you up there _again_?” Ruth Tracy clucks from under her teeth, “Are you _trying_ to give us all heart attacks?” Alan Tracy’s blond head pops up over the lip of the roof, grinning sheepishly as he sees his Grandmother frowning and tsking down below.

“Sorry Grandma,” Alan hops down from his perch with a short, guilty laugh. His eyes are tired; darkly ringed, and he staggers slightly on his landing. He’d been in John’s usual telescope spot again, and she’d have thought he’d been watching the stars, only its early afternoon and the sun is high in the sky. It looks more like he’s been _hiding._ Grandma Tracy’s arms come up to wrap around him before he can even stop wobbling. He may be taller than her already, but he’s always going to be her little Alan.

He’s a tad sunburnt though, she clucks to notice, across the bridge of his nose and radish-red around the tips of his ears. It’s just like one of her boys to forget his sun-lotion or a hat, though John is the worst for it; you can take the boy out of space but you can’t take space out of the boy and her Johnny _always_ forgets the effect the sun can have on his terribly fair skin. Beneath the burn though, the youngest Tracy’s face does look a little pale and drawn, and his eyes are big and liquid as he looks down at her.

“Why Alan, whatever is the matter, love?” Ruth frowns, her gnarly fingers rubbing smooth circles over his shoulder blades.

“M’just worried about John.” He mumbles; the red of his cheeks deepening in a way that has more to do with shame than with his sunburn. His posture is slightly hunched and his shoulders are trembling.

“Virgil and Doctor Caldwell say he’s doing a lot better now love. Looks to me like this is about more than just John’s little accident.” Grandma Tracy observes; her matriarchal instincts certain that there is something else going on in the boy’s mind. _Surely he can’t be this embarrassed over just the idea that he cares for his brother? They never usually have much trouble in that regard._

“Scott too.” Alan mumbles, after a beat. “I was piloting Three; it was my fault he hit his head.” Alan’s round face is flushed with guilt, his blue eyes big and liquid. “It’s my fault got Scott concussed.”

 _Ah_. She thinks. _So that’s the problem_.

“Oh _Alan_. That’s just nonsense and you know it,” Ruth tuts, her arms tightening around her boy, “Scott doesn’t blame you, so neither should you blame yourself. It was an _accident_. You’re just getting all het up for nothing, love.” Alan nods, his eyebrows still a little anxious, but he’s evidently taking her words to heart. She presses a quick, powdery kiss to his cheek and smiles at Jeff’s littlest. “Now, off to the kitchen with you. I was doing some baking and there’s a plate of double chocolate chip cookies in there with your name on it.” Ruth has always been a firm believer in fixing her boys with food and she smiles at Alan’s delighted grin. All of them need a little fattening up, she reckons. “There are different types for everyone, and the ones on the red plate are yours, love.”

“Thanks Grandma!” He yells over his shoulder as he breaks away from her; his feet pounding over the crazy paving. Foolish boy. She shakes her head and her fist at him, but he’s too far gone to her hear scolding him for running so haphazardly.

...

She heads down towards the Olympic sized pool next, and finds Gordon, predictably, in the water, doing rapid lengths. He kicks off at each end, performing a summersault in the water before shooting off the other way, his arms swooping up to form the graceful arcs of the butterfly stroke. He’s working off his stress in the best way he knows how.

Ruth smiles fondly, if a slightly exasperatedly at her little goldfish, and she scurries off to fetch him a towel and his shampoo for when he’s done. In the process she stops by the kitchen, smiling at Alan’s empty plate on the rack, and she picks up some of the white chocolate and raspberry cookies she’d made for Gordon. She lays the plate on a sun lounger with Gordon’s towel and things, and pours him a glass of orange juice to wash the biscuits down.

“Thanks Grandma.” Gordon, dripping all over the patio, has scrambled out of the pool and is honing in on Ruth’s baking with wet, spiky hair and a wild grin. She drops the towel over his shoulders, using it as a chance to give him a quick squeeze as she gives him a firm reminder to use sunscreen, if he’s going to be out here long.

...

She stops off to see Scott next. He’s still on enforced bed-rest, but he’s looking almost completely fine again and Ruth catches him sprawled back against his headboard, reading a book. The jagged mark across his brow is still covered with gauze, but his eyes are focusing fine on the small print and he’s no longer dizzy and nauseous.

“I brought you hazelnut cookies, Scotty.” Ruth smiles, “They’ve got a little bit of nutmeg in them too.”

“Grandma, you are an angel.” Scott is up, out of bed and taking the plate off her with steady hands and a warm smile before she can even cross the threshold. With a quick _snap_ the cookie in broken in half and popped his mouth and Scott lets out a soft moan of approval. His Grandma’s cookies are always the best and every so often she goes baking mad and makes each of them their favourites. Hazelnut is always his. “Thanks.” Scott brushes his lips against her cheek in a quick, cookie-crumb kiss and Ruth laughs and swats the boy away.

“Now, back into bed with you, young man.” And it’s a testament to the powers of Grandma Tracy that Scott doesn’t remind her exactly how old he actually is.

“Yes m’aam!” Scott throws her a mock salute and a mischievous grin and he’s off, scrambling back into bed to avoid her swatting hand. She makes sure to tuck him in for his cheek, and if her fingers linger a little too long on his shoulders then Scotty isn’t one to mind. Her boys are all adults now, but that doesn’t seem to matter. She’s quite sure they need her to look after them anyway.

...

Ruth finds her son and Brains in his office. She sets two mugs of coffee down within their reaches, and slides a plate of simple honeycomb biscuits in next to them. Jeff looks up gratefully at her, his hand stilling with his pencil. They’ve got big rolls of blue paper spread out all over his desk and Brains does his best to not get crumbs all over them as he takes a biscuit.

“Whatever _are_ you doing, Jeff?” Grandma Tracy asks, frowning at the complicated schematics her son is studying. She understands very little about her boy’s machines, but Ruth is always incredibly proud and impressed none the less.

“We’re reviewing the schematics for Thunderbird Five,” Jeff admits softly, reaching out to pick up his mug and cradling it between both hands as he takes a sip. “The safety protocols desperately need updating.” His voice is tight and there is lingering tension in his shoulders. “This could have all been prevented if...” The boy’s father trails off with a sigh.

“What are you thinking of?” Ruth asks; not because she’ll understand most of what he says, but because she wants to know that he’s going to keep their Johnny safe if they have to send him back into the cold emptiness of space. She’d protested the idea, at first, as had several of his brothers, but they all knew that really, even _this_ couldn’t keep their spaceman away from his stars. And International Rescue need him, the people need him, and John is far too noble to give that up. All of her boys are.

Softly, Jeff explains his plans to fix up the communications relay, so that the rescue calls they are channelling down to Tracy Island for the moment come through clear; they’re getting patchy messages through to the office using the automated system for forwarding calls at the moment, but it’s a poor substitute for Five, and without her the quality is appalling. They’re going to sending Brains and Alan up ASAP to begin repairs.

The new plans have detailed safe spaces to be built aboard Five. Shelters with backup oxygen and meteor-proofing and extra ration supplies. There are deflection weapons (that John will very likely _not_ agree with, let alone the UWF), changes to the shielding matrix, improvements to the communications systems and Brains has designed a kind of centrifuge that increases the effectiveness of the simulated Gravity. There are plans for changes to their boy’s spacesuit and his telescopes and Jeff has even put in upgrades to things like his refrigeration systems. Food storage will have never been more effective for nutritionally sound cardboard space food.

John, ever since he was a small child, had never asked for much, so when Jeff gets to give him _anything_ , he doesn’t hold back. He dotes on all of his children, but he just never gets the chance to spoil John the way he can the others and his new Thunderbird Five plans should make life up there not only _safer_ , but also _easier_ for his boy.

“... and how are _you_ doing Mom?” Jeff looks up at her suddenly, assessing Grandma Tracy with a sharp frown as she nods along to his plans, smiling in all the right places but looking tired and strained.

“Oh, don’t you worry about little old me, Jefferson Tracy.” Ruth leans over and presses a powdery kiss to his brow. “You keep on at your plans. You just make sure our boy is _safe_ so we can always bring him home. Now, bring that plate to the kitchen when you’re done, and don’t you boys work too late.”

...

Ruth bumps into Scott again in the hall; he’s obviously decided he’s napped for long enough and is taking his plate to the kitchen for washing up. His hair is sleep-rumpled and still in pyjama bottoms and an old USAF t-shirt and Ruth clucks to see that his feet are bare, his toes curling up on the cold polished wood of the floor.

“Where are you off to Grandma?” Scott asks. He’s eyeing up the plate she’s carrying, where yet more cookies are piled up. These ones are suspiciously green though, and Scott frowns at them, concerned.

“I’ve got a plate of pistachio cookies for Virgil.” Grandma Tracy laughs softly at his expression, “And I’m going to stop in and visit John.” Scott’s eyes darken slightly at that; shadowed with images only he can see of his brother, cold and lifeless, cradled in his arms with blue lips and a breathless chest.

“I’ll come with you.” Scott’s hands bunch into fists and Ruth doesn’t have the heart to send him back to bed instead, as she probably should do. They stop by John’s bedroom on the way, and Ruth steals a pair of the astronaut’s socks for Scotty; though she has to remind the silly boy at least three times that John won’t mind, and that he wouldn’t want Scott’s feet to go cold, before her grandson concedes. The pilot’s face flushes pink as he tugs them over his toes, promising to get them washed and returned before John even knows about it.

They pick up John’s duvet as well; complete with the soft, blue space-themed cover that he hasn’t actually _used_ on his bed since he was a little boy of twelve, but Grandma Tracy knows will _always_ be his favourite. Scott, understanding, doesn’t say anything as Ruth takes a moment to changes his brother’s sheets and re-organise John’s bedside table, even though it’s unlikely he’ll be using his own room for a good few weeks yet.

They head straight for the medical bay when she’s done. They’re not surprised to find Virgil in there with him, and Ruth quietly hands across the cookies and receives a tired, grateful glance in response. Virgil seems tired; running low as he sketches absently in the corner of John’s medical notes. He looks like his fingers are itching for his piano as a form of stress relief, but getting the boy to leave is nigh on impossible, and Grandma Tracy hopes her cookies will be enough for now.

John is sleeping. Looking small and fragile; covered in wires and tubes and, as Ruth tucks his space-print duvet gently over him, hiding the ugly lines briefly, he looks suddenly like that little boy of twelve all over again. Like he could have been just tucked up in bed, with one of his astronomy books open on his chest because he’d fallen asleep reading. Ruth slides into Scotty’s usual seat, reaching out to clasp John’s smooth, young hand between her own wrinkled fingers; her touch like tender and papery as she begins talking softly to her Grandson, telling him all about his brothers and how her day had been and how little Alan was becoming nearly as bad as _he_ was for not wearing a hat.

Doctor Caldwell comes in, with some test results of some kind, and bustles around John’s wires for a bit. The man is calm and professional, and he’s taken a huge weight off Virgil’s shoulders, and so Ruth smiles cordially at him, and offers out one of Virgil’s cookies, despite the boy’s muttered complaints.

Scott sinks down on the end of John’s mattress and just watches his brother’s still, empty face until, eventually, the pilot’s hand snakes out to just touch the cold edge of John’s ankle under his duvet. It creates a small, tangible link between them and Scott rubs small circles into their astronaut’s skin, closing his eyes and feeling for John’s pulse just under the hard ridge of the end of his fibula.


	9. Long Life. Cheerfulness. Lightness.

The second time John wakes it’s because his eyes are being gently pried open by firm, gloved fingers.

The light that assaults his pupils is so bright it feels like his retinas are burning and he can’t stop the half-cry of pain from escaping his dry, cold lips as he slams his eyes closed again. He takes a moment to just try and remember how to breathe. In through his nose, out through his mouth. Regular rhythm. Calm. It’s not really working very well. His eyes are sore and itchy wand his whole body _aches_. After a few seconds John’s first coherent thought begins to form and it solidifies as a vague; _where the hell am I?_ Disorientation blurs his memory and he can’t quite find all the pieces to put them together clearly enough; like a puzzle someone has lost half the pieces too. Or perhaps he has all the pieces, John muses, certain that everything is still there somewhere; he’s just not got the box with the picture on, of what they all should look like assembled. _He’d been aboard Five. Maybe. He’s not sure._ He vaguely recalls orange light and staring at mum’s star but he’s not really sure what that’s got to do with anything at all; he stares at that star all the time. It doesn’t explain why he’s so bloody cold and why everything _hurts_. There’s a dry, muted pain that buzzes in his skull in a way that suggests he’s probably on the good drugs. Thing is, he doesn’t remember _why_ he’s on the good drugs.

“Johnny?” A voice he really should recognise, rumbles softly somewhere above him; the person sounding concerned. “Are you awake?”

Obviously his harsh, hashed inhalation isn’t exactly subtitle and _someone_ has noticed his return to consciousness. John tries his eyes and almost cries out again, against the light, but after a few moments of blinking against the bitter, salty liquid that wells up over his stinging eyeballs and streams thickly down his cheeks, John just about makes out what looks like a ceiling above him, and monitors of some medical kind in his peripheral. He’s too hazy to work out what’s what. He’s definitely in Med-bay though, which makes the blurry, dark figure looming over him _Virgil_ and that explained why the voice had been familiar. He’s on Tracy Island and feeling blearily confident about his powers of deduction.

John focuses on trying to blink more, attempting to get the world back into better focus as the colours of the things around him are still blurry and distorted. The steady, rapid bleep of what sounds recognisably like a heart monitor comes across muffled and strange to his ears and, as John swallows thickly a few times, his throat like sandpaper, the sound clears a little, but not much. His head feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton wool.

He adds disorientation to his list of current troubles and John tries his level best to remember what exactly had happened. He’s really very unsure how he’d gotten here.

But then it hits him. The puzzle connects. The pieces fall into place. _Five._ The hull breach. No oxygen.

He remembers being so sure he was going to _die_.

And that’s when John finally realises that somehow, bizarrely and _miraculously_ , he’s _not dead._

...

Virgil is just checking how John’s pupils react to light when his brother’s face twists, screwing up and John _shudders_. Virgil freezes, watching as John’s eyes slam themselves closed again and his brother _groans_ like a dying animal taking its last breaths. His eyelids flutter and his brows scrunch and his teeth clench; the muscles in his neck straining. John’s breathing goes all tight and raspy, loud and fast until his brother appears to be choking, his whole body trembling, wracked with shudders as he coughs. The fingers on John’s good hand spasm, grasping at nothing.

Doctor Caldwell has stepped out in search of lunch and Virgil is a little uncertain what to do or whether John is even conscious or not. He can’t give him anything extra for another three hours, but it looks like John is in pain. His eyelids are trembling as his breathing evens into a ragged, quick tempo.

“Johnny?” He asks softy, “Are you awake?” and the response Virgil gets to that is John’s eyes trying, valiantly, to peel themselves open as his brother fights his way to consciousness. Virgil’s heart skips a beat. John moans again, his head thrashing weakly with his chest shuddering under the force of his breaths. Realising the harsh ceiling lights are probably painful, the second oldest of Jeff’s boy’s scrambles up to turn the dimmer down, darkening the room.

As he turns back relief surges hard and tight in Virgil’s throat. There’d been moments, over the past eight and a half days, when Virgil had thought that he’d never see that pair of blue eyes looking back at him again. But there John was; his eyes opening from thin, scrunched slits and his pupils growing larger as he tries to focus his vision, blinking blearily. Then, they begin to well up.

John’s face contorts, screwing up as big, fat tears roll languidly down his cheeks in salty rivulets, dampening the pillow above his head. The noise that accompanies the tears is horrible; all short, choking sobs, little gasping breaths filled with pain. He seems to be struggling with the cannula though his nose. His breathing has rocketed until he’s almost hyperventilating. There’s a rapid, awful spike in his heart rate and his blood pressure drops off worryingly. His oxygen levels are, for the first time, high. A little _too_ high. John’s good hand comes up, trembling; his muscles weak as he reaches out, fingers hooking tightly into Virgil’s sleeve with a grip like iron even though that must feel like hell with the trocar plunged deep into his biggest arterial vein.

Virgil panics first; thinking that Johnny must be in so much _pain_ and that the drugs aren’t doing their job, but then John is shuddering, his body trying to curl into itself, ribs be dammed, and his lips are forming rough, scratchy words and he’s mumbling out “I’m _alive_. Oh gods I’m actually _alive._ ” over and over, John’s shaking fist tightly wound in Virgil’s sleeve and his body wracked by sobs. Something crumples within Virgil’s chest, giving like rock to paper. John hasn’t cried like this since he was a little boy with scraped knees and their mother’s arms around him and the sound tugs _painfully_ at Virgil’s heart.

Gently, Virgil lets his weight down on the side of John’s bed, and he reaches out; threading his fingers into his little brother’s hair, just like he’d seen Scott doing regularly over the days that John had been unconscious. He strokes through the clean, fine strands, pressing close as he tries to shush his brother and John sags against him, hand fisting in his shirt and he trembles as he cries.

“It’s alright Johnny.” Virgil whispers into his little brothers hair, “Shhh, it’s ok. It’s going to be ok. You’re alright. We got you back. We got you home.” Slowly, the shuddering in John’s body starts to even itself out. Virgil focuses on rubbing broad, comforting circles through his little brother’s scalp. It’s an awkward kind of half hug they’re cradled in, careful not to put any kind of stress on John’s healing injuries, and Virgil can’t help but think that Scott would be much better at this than he was. Happy, warm bear hugs he can do. His brother shaking them both apart; not so much. “In out. In out. That’s it Johnny, just like that.” _You’re not dead yet. You’re not dead yet_. “Come on John.” Virgil murmurs softly.

Eventually, as John’s sobs even out, their spaceman turns his pale face, tilting his head up and back to meet Virgil’s eyes. He can’t seem to help the broken; “I’m alive?” that spills, rough and scratchy, past his lips before he can stop it; like paint leaking from a tube, or oxygen through a hull breach. The statement isn’t a statement at all, but a question, and Virgil finds his own eyebrows scrunching in sorrow and he gently cradles John’s head so that they meet eye-to-eye, brown and blue, without any effort on John’s part.

“Of course you’re alive, Johnny. We came for you. We’re your brothers; we’ll _always_ come for you.” John blinks languidly at that, and Virgil hopes he’s not going to start crying again.

“I was dead.” John mumbles blearily, his voice painfully raw with pain and emotion and the damage to his trachea. “There was no oxygen, I’d made it to get a second tank but that was running out too. Everything was broken. Five was falling apart... I could see mum’s star. I couldn’t breathe. I thought...”

“Oh _Johnny_.” And then Virgil has his arms wrapped tightly around his brother, his face buried into the side of John’s neck as he whispers just how _sorry_ he was, they all were, that they didn’t get there sooner.

“I was scared.” Comes the soft admission from John and Virgil can only cling on all the stronger, “I thought there was no way for you to reach me in time. I’d... I told Scott to bring my body back I...”

Suddenly, there’s a loud, awful _crash_ accompanied by a sharp gasp and both John and Virgil jump at the noise. Virgil jolts upright and both of them look around sharply, just in time to see Scott, staring at them; his face bloodless and his mouth open in a little O and all the things he’s just dropped out of numb hands are scattered across the floor around his feet. His eyes are blank and wide and his eyebrows seem to have almost disappeared into his hairline. He’s frozen, staring at the open blue sliver of John’s pale eyes.

“Oh gods,” And that’s when Scott’s leg’s try to take a wobbly step backwards, but they give out from underneath him, sending him crumpling down to the clean, clinical linoum floor instead. He hits it hard, slamming down onto his tailbone, but Scott doesn’t appear to register any pain because he’s just staring, his hands coming up to cover his mouth and gasping; “You’re _alive_.” And isn’t that the stupidest thing to say because of course he’d known that, perfectly well and clearly, for eight whole goddam days of worry and _fear_ , but this, seeing Johnny looking back at him, pale and swathed in tubes but awake and _living_ hits him like drop from Two’s pod.

“Scotty?” John rasps from his bed, his brows cinched in confusion and concern, and suddenly his older brother is up, off his backside; all over him and everywhere at once, Scott’s arms strong and tight around his shoulders. John winces at the pressure.

“Oh my god...” Scott is mumbling, over and over, his breath hot against John’s throat. “You had me terrified, Starman.” Scott whispers harshly into his hair. “And if you weren’t already hurt I’d slap you upside the head for it.” He just knows he’s going to be having nightmares of seeing John’s floating, lifeless body for a good while yet, even now.

Scott pulls back, his hands gripping either side of John’s face, as they’d done when he’d found that precious pulse up on Three, and he can feel it know, thrumming away under his fingers. John meets his eyes, and Scott can see they’re full of confusion and he almost laughs, but it’s a wet, cold, choked sound and his hands are shaking.

John’s good hand comes up, weakly, and Scott closes his eyes as John’s fingers trace themselves lightly along the jagged, red, half-healed cut across his forehead. It’s a little bumpy ridge of puckered, red skin and crusty congealed blood, scabbed over but still raw and painful. But John’s touch is gentle, and as Scott opens his eyes again, he finds his brother’s eyes wide and concerned. He almost laughs again at that. He’s the one who should be worried.

Virgil clears his throat behind them like _he_ wasn’t the one John had been sharing a little moment with just minutes ago, and Scott turns to see his brother holding out the things he’d dropped. The eldest boy’s face colours with embarrassment and he takes the little pile, sliding it onto John’s bedside table, next to a huge bunch of flowers with a little card that had been from Lady P.

John’s head turns, weakly, and he seems to be trying to focus his eyes on the blooms. A small, fond smile plays across his lips. There are pearly bloomed chrysanthemums for _long life_ , Gerberas for _cheerfulness_ and nestled amongst them are small sprigs of Larkspur, which represent _lightness_ of all things, and _that_ , John muses distantly,seems to be some kind of playful joke about his return to gravity. John then tries to turn his attention to the pile Scott is rapidly re-stacking. There’s a couple of books (including, John is confused to note, his battered old copy of Douglas Adam’s _Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy_ ),the holopad tablet from John’s room and a white plastic tupperware.

“Grandma made get-well-soon cookies.” Scott peels back the lid of the tupperware, exchanging an almost telepathic look with Virgil to check it was alright for John to have one this early in his recovery. “Looks like Grandma still knows your favourite, Johnny. They’re apple and cinnamon and very soft, so you shouldn’t have trouble.” The smile that appears on John’s face is almost haunting and Scott realises, in that moment, that his brother’s cheekbones are more prominent than he’s ever seen them. John’s eyes have lit up, almost glowing, at the idea of a simple cookie. _Stupid cardboard space food._ Scott scowls. _Supposedly nutritionally sound cardboard space food, but cardboard space food all the same_ and it’s left John, as it always does, a little _too_ eager for his Grandma’s home cooking.

“I think we can probably stop feeding you though a tube now, Johnny.” Virgil smiles lightly, as he slowly raises the head of the bed to boost John gently into a sitting position. “I’ll check that with Doctor Caldwell first, but if you can keep that cookie down I don’t see any reason for you not to begin eating proper foods.”

John’s hands are shaking and Scott has to help him get the cookie to his mouth, but the astronaut’s expression as he takes a small, shuddery bite is _worth it_. John’s got cookie crumbs stuck to the side of his mouth and his eyelids flutter closed and Scott would think he’s taken a bite of the best cookie in the world with the way his throat trembles as the sugar hits him.

“Grandma’s cookies are the best.” John manages eventually, with a quaking smile. He’s feeling sleepy again; lethargic, and perhaps it’s the drugs or perhaps it’s just his body trying to repair itself but his eyelids feel incredibly heavy and John is struggling to focus on his brothers.

“I’m going to call Alan and Gordon,” one of them is saying, “I’ll get them to bully Dad out of his office and to bring Doctor Caldwell, they’ll want to know you’re awake...” but John, exhausted feels like he’s drifting away again.

He gets snapshots of activity, opening his eyes again despite not remembering ever closing them, to find his two littlest brothers curled up either side of him, babbling away. His Father’s hand in his hair and the smell of his Grandmothers cooking, warm and wafting. Evidently she’d brought everyone down lunch. John manages to become half coherent enough to eat another cookie and let the kind, grey haired Doctor poke around at him with cold hands and a gentle tone, but it doesn’t last long and pretty soon Virgil is ushering everyone out and dimming the lights, telling him to get some sleep.

After all, they’ll all be there tomorrow.


	10. Epilouge

It’s about two weeks later, when John’s ribs no longer feel like they’re going to forcibly eject themselves from his chest cavity every time he moves, that the boys decide it would be good to get him some fresh air, and they take him outside.

It’s done with a whole lot of fuss and worry and concerned faces, plus what feels like a whole mountain of blankets to keep out the chill, and he’s a little doped up on the good drugs courtesy of Doctor Caldwell, but then they’re outside, all five boys huddled around the edge of the pool together, staring up into the inky blackness of the night sky, far above them.

John, tucked between Scott and Virgil, with Alan at his feet and Gordon curled about his hip, seems to sink into the sky, letting it fill his vision with the familiar comfort of his constellations. He can name almost every light in the sky above him, and his smiles to see the LucilleX10-37 glittering, twinkling merrily; looking down on them all. She doesn’t twinkle that that from space, from his window on ‘Five, but John knows the stellar scintillation is because of the way the light travels through the many layers of the Earth’s atmosphere - the light of the star being refracted many times in random directions, as it hits changes in the density of the air. He doesn’t mind the difference; it’s surprisingly pleasant, a nice change to watching the stars distorted by the reflection of Five’s ugly, artificial lights in his viewplane’s glass.

John sighs softly; he’s content for now, finally back to looking at his stars.

Suddenly though, a comet, bright and gold and _glittering_ , streaks across the sky leaving a hot, fiery trail behind it and all five of the boys gasp at its brilliance. Something hard lodges itself in Alan’s throat. He’d been sat watching meteoroids like this when...

“John.” Virgil’s voice is soft but tense and the middle brother looks across at him, tearing his eyes from the sky. Two’s pilot has gone rigid against John’s side. “Is that one of the meteors that...”

“Nah,” John sounds out, his intonation a little slurry under the heavy-handed drugging he’s been given, “They’re long gone by now. ‘S more likely part of Five’s debris field coming down through the atmosphere.” He sounds thoroughly _miserable_ about that and he gets Virgil’s arm coming up and tucking around his shoulders, squeezing gently. It helps a little, and John leans into his side. Scott then slumps down on his other side; their eldest brother resting his head carefully against the top of John’s good arm. Alan’s fingers tighten on his trouser leg.

There’s a long, uncomfortable silence between them; stretching out awkwardly as they all crane their necks back to stare mournfully at the sky. The only sound that can be heard is the lapping water and the creak of a deckchair as someone shifts, until that is, Gordon, the little shit, flings an arm up to point at the sky, just as another comet streaks across it.

“Look John!” Their resident goldfish cries out. “There goes your _toilet seat_!”

Scott, who’d been deep in thought, is the one who jolts hardest at the sharp shout, and he begins to splutter incoherently, taken totally off guard by the joke. Little Alan laughs out loud, the sound bright and heady and it’s actually kind of refreshing to hear.

“Nah, Bathrooms the other side of ‘Five.” Virgil grins, catching on and sharing a conspiring glance with Gordon. “That’s probably his _porn stash_.” And John reaches out and somehow manages to swat him around the head for that one.

“Not likely.” Scott muses, staring up into the blank abyss of sky above them. “The only stash they’ve managed to smuggle up there is all that chocolate Alan got given on Valentines.” Big brother teases lightly, a grin spreading across his face to match his brother’s.

Alan just groans at that though, muttering something about a waste of good chocolate, before a more comfortable, companionable silence falls over the five brothers.

“My lady is destroyed, isn’t she?” John is the one who breaks the silence this time; a soft, broken murmur into the endless darkness. His voice is glum as he watches another piece of his book collection burn brightly across the sky (and won’t _that_ give NASA enough to talk about for weeks; _foreign object sighted by telescope – could it be aliens? A new meteorite? A Satellite? No... It’s just one of John Tracy’s textbook manuscripts, see, he’s even doodled in the corner of that page – a little squid getting **squished ** by a spaceman... Sorry for the scare NASA_).

“Ah we can rebuild her;” Virgil shrugs, the movement rocking the tight knit band of brothers. “Dad’s already got the plans up and on the go. Brains has some great new schematics for you to look over when you’re better.” Two’s pilot tightens the arm around John’s shoulders again, pressing his little brother close. “What we can’t rebuild, is _you_.” He adds softly.

“I was so sure I was going to die.” John admits quietly, and he feels the arm tighten even _further_ around his shoulders. Scott tenses and Alan sucks in a sharp breath. Gordon, for some reason, chooses to simply smush his face into John’s knee, muttering something unintelligible that he never repeats. “We face danger on rescues all the time, sure” John adds, “but that’s easy; it can feel there’s no way out but it’s _easy_ to keep calm and _laugh_ death in the face, but this was... just... there _was_ no way out.”

“You’re alive.” Scott reminds him, his cheek soft against John’s shoulder; he can feel the vibrations as his eldest brother talks. “Your heart is beating,” there are fingers pressed against his chest to prove it, “and you’re alive.”

“Thank god.” Gordon grumbles, his head now thrown back nonchalantly. There’s tension around his eyes though, as he stares up at John’s comet-studded cosmos. Gradually, they all go back to watching silently, with only the occasional soft comment shared between them; a _oh man look at that one,_ and one _you know, the nucleus of an atypical comet is constructed of compact ice and... _lecture from a certain spaceman and then there’s the _I’m glad you’re all here_ that gets whispered into the mix as well, though no one is quite sure who it came from. It’s beautiful, in a sad, tense kind of way.

Slowly, John’s breathing begins to even out, his head drifts gradually down towards his chest and his eyelids gently flutter closed.

“Aaa... Come on,” Scott, stretches his shoulders, working out the kinks and he smiles softly at his sleeping brother. Gently he scoops Johnny into his arms, blankets and all and Scott presses a firm, dry kiss to the young man’s brow. “It’s getting cold out here.” He comments to the others, all rising and eager to follow Scotty back inside, “Let’s bring our Starman home.”

The End


End file.
